Researcher identifiers and profiles

Finding publications by a particular author is often far from simple. With the tremendous number of researchers and published documents available, ensuring that the documents you're looking at belong to the correct John Smith has become quite an issue.

Different services have been created in an attempt to ensure the right person is getting credit for the right work. It is generally up to the researcher to sign up for these services.

ORCID – a unique 16-digit number attached to a profile that can be filled out in as much or as little detail as you wish, with sections for Education, Employment, Funding and Works. ORCID profiles allow you to associate your ORCID with other author identifiers including ResearcherID, and personal websites. For more information on ORCID, please see this ORCID Library Guide.

Why sign up for ORCID?

• It gives you some control over what’s being attributed (or not attributed, as the case may be) to you in important citation databases
• It allows for the creation of an authoritative record of your publications in a single location
• It enables others to discover other work you’ve done, even if it is not indexed in a particular database
• Some journals now require that you have an ORCiD when submitting your work for publication

Other author identifiers and their features*:

ResearcherID** – a Thomson Reuters product that functions in coordination with Web of Science, an important citation database. Search Web of Science for your documents and associate them with your ResearcherID. Interoperable with ORCID.
**As of April 2019, all ResearcherIDs have been moved to the Publons platform (FAQs for Publons-ResearcherID).

Scopus Author Profile – automatically assigned by the Scopus database when your publications are indexed within it. You can request changes to your profile if you notice inaccuracies in the documents associated with your Profile.

Google Scholar Author Profiles – allows you to search for and associate yourself with your documents that are discoverable in the Google Scholar search interface

* Note that some of these are associated with databases for which you/your institution need a subscription in order to access