Finding your publications in citation databases - Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar - can be more difficult than expected. Reasons why it can be difficult:
In the chapter Examples of name problems you can see some real-life examples.
You know what you have published, but for someone else it can be hard to make a list of your publications. If this list is needed to decide whether you're a suitable candidate for a research grant or research position, this can have unintended consequences.
However, there is a solution: claim your publications! Create or check author profiles, enrich them with information about your affiliation and interests, add your publications and keep them up-to-date.
The video What is ORCID? (4.17) explains how the ORCID identifier can ensure that your publications, datasets, and other research outputs are connected with you and how that saves time.
You share your name with other researchers
When you search in Scopus for publications of Lars Norden, you find multiple Scopus Author Profiles. One of these researchers is affiliated with 'Fundacao Getulio Vargas' in Brazil.
If you would make the effort to check the publications assigned to this profile, you'll find out that this list contains publications of two authors: Lars Nordén and Lars Norden. They work in the same field (at least for the layman), and published in the same journals. So it's not strange the algorithm of Scopus wasn't able to spot the difference. Fortunately, both researchers have an easy-to-find online publication list and a Google Scholar Citation Profile - this helps to find out which publication belongs to which researcher. But if you would just use Scopus 'quick and easy' you might draw the wrong conclusions.
You have used different names, for example your first name vs. your initials or your married vs. your maiden name
Another example from Scopus: a search for Caroline Koedoot returns two Scopus Author Profiles:
and a search for Caroline De Sonneville also returns two Scopus Author Profiles:
You need to know both the maiden and the married name to create a complete publication list of this researcher.
You have a name that's difficult to handle by automatic indexing systems - compound names, names with special characters and surnames with a prefix, such as 'van' or 'van der', can cause problems
We used a (paper) publication list we received from Robert von Friedeburg to find his publications in Web of Science. This was the final list of author names:
The 'von' was sometimes part of the first name, adhered to Friedeburg or ignored at all. Friedeburg was also misspelled twice.
Occasionally, an error is made in the original publication: the author name is spelled incorrectly or something went wrong in the format of the author names.
In this example the author name should have been Arnold B. Bakker instead of Baker:
In this example the name of the second author was cut in two: it should have been 'Maureen P.M.H. Rutten-van Mölken, PhD' instead of 'Maureen P.M.H., PhD' and 'Rutten-van Mölken':
If you perform an author search, you might miss these articles.
You published in a journal out of your normal 'scope' - this can make it hard for outsiders to decide if the publication is yours
In this case we were wondering: is this really a publication of Ale Smidts, a professor of marketing research?
Luckily, we didn't have to check the author information in the article itself: this author has claimed the publication in Web of Science by adding his ResearcherID:
ORCID - Open Researcher and Contributor ID - 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. More and more funders and publishers will ask for your ORCID iD.
You can create your own ORCID iD, which is a 16-digit number (xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx) and add employment, funding, work and other information to your ORCID record - check the Handout 'Enhance your academic visibility with ORCID: creating your ORCID iD and record' (PDF) for more information. In the EUR ORCID LibGuide you find more detailed information about (using) ORCID.
You can link your ORCID iD to your Scopus Author Identifier, to your ResearcherID and to your publications in Web of Science.
As an example: this is the ORCID record of Annemiek Harder (professor at ESSB): https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3809-9427
The Scopus Author Profile distinguishes between names by assigning each author in Scopus a unique number (the Scopus Author ID) and grouping together all of the documents written by that author. An algorithm is used that matches author names based on their affiliation, address, subject area, source title, dates of publication citations, and co-authors. If mistakes have been made in this automatic process, you can request author detail corrections (for example merging profiles or excluding publications from your profile).
The Scopus Author Profile is created for you, but you can request author detail corrections (for example merging profiles or excluding publications from your profile). See more information in the Handout Checking & updating your Scopus Author ID & Profile (PDF). You can link your Scopus Author Identifier to your ORCID.
As an example: this is the Scopus Author Identifier of Arnold Bakker (ESSB): https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57205383513
You can create your own Google Scholar Citations profile. You have to match your publications to your profile. When you make this profile public, it will appear in the Google Scholar results when people search for your name. In Publish or Perish it's possible to search by Google Scholar Profile.
Check the Handout Creating your Google Scholar Citations Profile (PDF) for more information.
As an example: this is the Google Scholar Ciatations profile of professor Thea Hilhorst:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gq0I100AAAAJ
A Web of Science Author Record is a group of publications in Web of Science likely authored by one person. The records are created with a combination of artificial intelligence and human curated data. An author record has a ResearcherID, an author identifier used in Web of Science.
Users of Web of Science can improve a record by adding or removing publications or by merging profiles. Authors can claim their own record, and then their Author Record becomes a Web of Science Researcher Profile. A claimed record can be recognized by the green check mark behind the name of the author. A researcher can make her peer review activities visible on the Researcher Profile.
In April 2023, Web of Science introduced automatic updates of the Research Profiles: new publications are added to claimed profiles. You will receive an e-mail when publications are added to your profile. Before April 2023, new publications were added a new author records, so some researchers will have more than one author record in Web of Science.
As examples:
Please note: unclaimed author records are only visible for visitors with a Web of Science subscription. Visitors without a subscription will see an empty page.
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This link opens in a new windowScopus is a multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature (journals and books). The search results also contain links to preprints (2017 onwards) and research data.
This link opens in a new window 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.
