Skip to content

Research impact and publishing: Author IDs & Profiles

Distinguish yourself

To get credit for all of your research outputs they must be correctly attributed to you. Author ambiguity may occur due to a name change during a career, differences in publisher formatting of names, and researchers with same or similar names.

"Of the more than 6 million authors in a major journal citations and abstracts database, more than two-thirds of them share a last name and single initial with another author, and an ambiguous name in the same database refers on average to eight people". Sussanah Sabine, Australian National Data Service

Author identifier tools

Unique author identifiers are important as a means of distinguishing yourself from others.
Four key author identifier tools are:

  • ORCID (Open researcher and contributor ID)
    Creating a free ORCID account gives you a unique 16 digit identification number that can be used to link you to your work.  Publication information can be manually added or imported from databases. ORCID can be easily linked to other identifiers such as those from Web of Science or Scopus, and provides an internationally recognised unique identifier.
    The NHMRC and the ARC encourage all researchers applying for funding to have an ORCID identifier.
     
  • ResearcherID (via Web of Science)
    Registering for a free Researcher ID allows you to add your publications via Web of Science or EndNote. ResearcherID then calculates your citations and h-index based on these publications. Access profiles via the "ResearcherID" in Web of Sciencefrom the "My Tools" drop-down option; or directly from the ResearcherID website. Online help: Recorded training videos and FAQs.
     
  • Scopus Author Identifier
    Scopus automatically assigns authors an author identifier and associates authors with their publications. To find your author ID, login to Scopus and use Author search to find your profile. (Note: If all of your publications are not listed under a single profile, you can request to merge them). Publication lists are updated automatically from Scopus content (Note: content not indexed in Scopus cannot be added). Citation metrics are available from 1996.  View further information and an author search tutorial.

Social networks for researchers

There are many academic and professional networking sites which provide a platform to:

  • Create a profile to increase the visibility and accessibility of your research output
  • Share papers and follow colleagues or peers to view their research, identify potential collaborators and
    grow your network
  • Generate citation metrics which indicate the reach of your work


Social networks can augment traditional means of scholarly communication, but with so many options available you should be clear on why you are using them and what you hope to achieve. Make sure you understand the shortcomings if you choose to entrust your research to a networking site -  papers uploaded may not be able to be removed if you change your mind late
r, and you (and those in your contact lists) may be subject to unsolicited emails or spam.

Google Scholar Profile

Industry and employers may search for the talent they are looking for using internet search engines. Having a Google Scholar profile means that you are discoverable and have a platform to present your unique skills and expertise. Create a profile using the "My Citations" link in Google Scholar. Content can be updated automatically or manually. Public profiles appear in Google Scholar results. 

Citation metrics update automatically, however, can appear inflated in comparison with ResearcherID and Scopus Author ID which are more widely used throughout the higher education sector in Australia due to their structured and verifiable analysis. 
Online help: Overview.

Academia.edu 

Academia.edu is a for-profit company. It is an academic networking site that allows you to:

  • Create a profile that will appear in Google searches
  • Upload full-text publications (within copyright) that will be indexed by Google Scholar
  • Nominate your research interests to customise your newsfeed and follow likeminded scholars
  • Access your analytics page that provides an overview of visitors and metrics on views.

For examples see Monash University on Academia.edu

ResearchGate 

ResearchGate is a for-profit company. It provides a free social network for scientists in which you can:

  • Create a detailed profile
  • Upload full-text publications (within copyright), or upload work for comment or review
  • Nominate your research expertise and endorse researchers in your network
  • Follow scholars or topics, comment or review the work of others, and ask and answer research questions
  • Track engagement with your work through citations or views, find who is reading your work and their country and institution.

SSRN is a global collaborative composed of 24 research networks, which aims to make social science research rapidly available and to facilitate direct communication amongst authors and readers. SSRN is owned by Elsevier.
 
The SSRN eLibrary consists of two parts: an Abstract Database where you can upload your abstracts, and an Electronic Paper Collection where you can upload your full papers. Registered users can download these for free. 
 
  • Create a detailed Author Home Page
  • Share your research publications (within copyright) - full text publications are indexed by Google Scholar
  • Interact with others in your field of interest
  • Access analytics such as the number of downloads and citations for your documents

Mendeley 

Mendeley is a free reference manager and an academic social network owned by Elsevier.

  • Create a profile and showcase your work
  • Store and organise your research, and share work (within copyright) publicly or privately
  • Follow other members and create and participate in public and private groups
  • Measure your article performance with a range of authoritative metrics, including downloads and citations

LinkedIn and LinkedIn for Higher Ed Professionals

LinkedIn is a global, career and industry oriented, social networking service for professionals. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft.

Employers can post jobs and job seekers can post their CVs. LinkedIn profiles may be ranked highly in search engine results.

LinkedIn users include businesses and individuals who can create profiles and connections to others who may represent their real-world professional relationships.

Users can invite anyone to make a connection. It is recommended that users only accept connection requests from people that they know, or from those for which the connection may be mutually beneficial. ​

Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging information network that allows users to send and read posts of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. 

Both individuals and organisations use Twitter to communicate, network and keep up-to-date with their areas of interest. For researchers, Twitter can be used to:

  • 'Follow' other Twitter users or entities to network, or stay up-to-date with news, events or breakthroughs 
  • Easily access the discussions at conferences or events by following 'hashtags
  • Promote and share your research outputs, projects or ideas via 'tweets'
  • Engage with other researchers via 'retweets' or responses to tweets

    For more information see the Altmetrics Libguide
Loading

ORCID at Monash

Add your ORCID ID directly or create one through the link provided on your personal profile in Pure (myResearch). It takes around 30 seconds to register.
Adding an ORCID ID will increase the accuracy of the harvest of research outputs from Scopus into Pure.

Image of man with question by pakorn at FreeDigitalPhots.net
http://guides.lib.monash.edu/research-impact-publishing/researcher-profiles
guides.lib.monash.edu
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-13
58614
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:RXNEHAI4OUGCI5QHXYR2QAGVL754PMGT
<urn:uuid:6ffaef3d-d161-4fdc-acd8-8750f0b02692>
2017-03-29T03:27:47Z
52.22.176.215
sha1:37SDIDFCEF3MEQXDK5LC23XBS5W27QPM
<urn:uuid:2f837563-221a-487a-aefb-3a173773e653>
http://guides.lib.monash.edu/research-impact-publishing/researcher-profiles
length
response
<urn:uuid:cf7af7a9-50d5-425b-a380-9e66d102ef55>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-13
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for March 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf