Publishing Resources: Unique Author Identifiers

The main benefit to creating a unique author identity is to assist with author disambiguation when searching the published literature.  When searching based on authors' names only, it is difficult to differentiate between, Smith, J. or Smith, J.S. or Smith, Jane.  With common surnames, it is problematic to locate all authors' works by name searching only.  

Creating a unique author identity with a digital identifier helps eliminate this problem and allows searchers, publishers, and colleagues to locate your published work by a digital unique identifier rather than relying on name and affiliation searching only.  Creating a key author identity also allows you to manage a complete list of all your published works to share with others.  Consider creating an ORCID, ResearcherID, Google Scholar Profile, or join an academic networking platform to enhance your professional online identity and provide better discoverability and collaboration for your research.

The ORCID  is platform agnostic and is recognized by many different publishers.  You may create other unique identifiers based on different publisher affiliations, but for publishing your scholarly works, you should also create and maintain an ORCID.  Your ORCID is also linkable to other scholarly identifiers such as ResearcherID and is commonly used across platforms.

• Ten Reasons to Get and Use an ORCID ID
• 6 Ways to Make Your ORCID ID Work for You

Registering for an ORCID is free and easy.

• Three Easy Steps for Signup

ResearcherID , now known as Publons, is managed by Clarivate Analytics (formerly known as Thomson Reuters) and is searchable on the Web of Science database platforms, along with ORCID.

• Provides a solution to the author ambiguity problem within the scholarly research community. Each member is assigned a unique identifier to enable researchers to manage their publication lists, track their times cited counts and h-index, identify potential collaborators and avoid author misidentification. In addition, your ResearcherID information integrates with the Web of Science and is ORCID compliant, allowing you to claim and showcase your publications from a single account. Search the registry to find collaborators, review publication lists and explore how research is used around the world!