Managing Your Author Identity: Your Author Identity

Because multiple researchers in the similar or very different fields may have the same names, there is an author ambiguity problem within scholarly resources.

To overcome the problem of author ambiguity, the idea of assigning each researcher a "unique author identifier" has been raised.
 

Multiple systems for administering unique author identifiers have been developed. This guide will show you some of the more prominent systems. Each has benefits and challenges. Explore this guide to help you choose which system works best for you!

Some benefits of managing your author identy include:

• Less ambiguity as to who has published a certain paper when different variations of an author’s name have been used
• Ability to accurately measure citations of individual papers or authors
• Easier evaluation of an author’s productivity and impact in his/her field
• Improved research impact
• Simplified data handling and storage; author identification only has to be stored in one place
• Richer cross-referencing possible, e.g., search engines, browsers, and other applications can create links between an author’s biographical information and his/her published works
• Opportunity to create new networks of data, e.g., academic genealogies

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