Searching for the work of specific authors can be difficult: there can be multiple authors with the same family name and initials, even within the same research field. An author can also change his or her name (for example after marriage) or change research fields. When you want to compare researchers, it’s important that you are looking at the work of the intended researcher, not also at the work of another researcher with the same name.
Web of Science tries to solve this problem in two ways: the author search, with distinct author sets, and with linking authors to two Author Identifiers: Web of Science ResearcherID and ORCID iD.
This part of the course covers:
Open the Researchers tab. You can perform a Name Search or search by Author identifier, using Web of Science ResearcherID or ORCID iD.
In the first step of the Name Search you have to enter the last name and at least one initial of the author.
Click Search. If there is one result, you will see the Author Profile of the author.
If there are multiple results, you will get a list of author records. An author record is a set of documents likely authored by the same person. An algorithm of Web of Science generates these sets. One author can have multiple author records in Web of Science and sometimes a publication is linked to the wrong author. You can refine the results, by using the filter options on the left side of the screen.
The results list shows the name, name variants, the last affiliation, the number of documents, publication years, top journals, a link to see recent publications, and the Web of Science ResearcherID (the author identifier used by Web of Science). A green check mark means that the author 'claimed' that record, he or she verified the publications list.
Web of Science displays two author identifiers: Web of Science ResearcherID and ORCID.
Web of Science ResearcherID is an author identifier developed by Clarivate Analytics. A Web of Science ResearcherID is created for each author record in Web of Science and a researcher can claim their author record.
When you know the Web of Science ResearcherID of the author you’re interested in, you can enter it in the Document Search in the field 'Author Identifiers'. In the Researchers tab, you can select the option Author Identifiers instead of Name Search. Claimed Web of Science ResearcherIDs will be shown in the full record of an article in Web of Science.
ORCID is an initiative to solve the author/contributor name ambiguity problem in scholarly communications by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID and other current author ID schemes, including Web of Science ResearcherID. Researchers have to create their own ORCID iD ánd link it with their Web of Science ResearcherID. ORCID can be linked to other identifiers as well, like the Scopus Author ID. When you know the ORCID iD of the author you’re interested in, you can enter it in the Basic Search in the field 'Author Identifiers' or in the Authors search by selecting the option Author Identifiers instead of Name Search. The ORCID iD is shown in the full record of an article in Web of Science. For this Web of Science uses public information from ORCID.
Please note: the researcher has to keep his/her author identifiers up-to-date. It's possible you don't find all his or her publications when you search by an identifier. In this example, the Web of Science ResearcherID and the ORCID iD of the researcher are not linked yet.
When you have checked the publications of the author in Web of Science (no publications missing in the profile and no publications of another researcher in the list you can click the button View citation report on the (combined) Author Profile or Citation Report above the search results.
Here you see the number of publications (in the EUR subscription of Web of Science), the number of citations and citing articles, also without self-citations and the H-index. This information is based on the articles in the results list, so you have to make sure that list is accurate and up-to-date (otherwise the H-index could for example be partially based on the articles and citation received by someone else!).
Below the 'Times Cited and Publications Over Time graph' you find the list of publications, with the citations per year and the total citations per publication. Via Export Full Report you can download this list.
What does 'without self-citations' mean in Web of Science? This is the total number of citing articles minus any article that appears in the set of search results on the Citation Report. This means this number is not determined by matching author names: it is possible you see articles from the author in the list of citing articles. In that case, check your search criteria, maybe you excluded certain author sets.
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This link opens in a new windowWeb of Science is a citation database, covering academic journals worldwide in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, and conference proceedings. It provides cover-to-cover indexing, from 1975 till present.