Researcher Support Library Services: Online Identifiers for Author Attribution
Create an accessible online presence for your research outputs which goes hand in hand with increased visibility of your Open Access works. Identifiers connect publications, authors, institution & funders to minimise manual update and auto-populate profiles, saving authors time.
Add, check and edit your Identifiers in Pure
For advice on ensuring your ORCiD, Scopus and other identifiers are set up correctly in your Pure profile, see the RIS Sharepoint guidance:
ORCiD
Distinguish Yourself
The University of Plymouth has an expectation that all research active staff and all doctoral research students who do not already have one, will create an ORCiD account & connect it to Pure.
Having an ORCiD profile improves author attribution for research, and is now an expectation of many research funders and publishers, requested and used within some grant application processes and manuscript submission workflows. It is supported by several online services, including Research Fish, Scopus, Web of Science, publisher submission systems, Pure - where having an up-to-date ORCiD profile can make the claiming of publications easier.
Having an ORCiD ID can:
- Improve the discoverability of your work
- Eliminate name ambiguity
- Ensure attribution
- Minimise the manual burden of updating profiles
ORCID questions
Your ORCiD ID can mean improved discoverability and attribution of your work by eliminating name ambiguity (e.g. search for your ID in Web of Science for a clean list of publications to generate an H-index).
ORCiD links into external systems ensuring funders can recognise your past works irrespective of changes to names or affiliations.
ORCiD profiles reduce the manual burden for authors by autoupdating when new papers are published. ORCiD can also populate other profiles it has links with e.g. Pure.
Setting up ORCiD takes 30 seconds (it integrates with single sign on) and populating with past works can be quickly added via ORCiD's wizard tools.
When submitting manuscripts to publishers; or submitting grant applications to funders; or using tools such Researchfish, will autopopulate these systems with your publications and details. NIHR and Wellcome now mandate use of an ORCiD ID. UKRI strongly encourage funded authors to have an ORCiD ID and have now integrated ORCiD into their Je-S grants system. UKRI's Open Access Review consultation also proposes the use of ORCID to identify all authors and contributors.
It has been recommended that ORCiD IDs be mandatory for the REF exercise following REF 2021.
No, in fact, ORCiD should update itself and any other systems linked with it reducing the manual burden for authors - this will be possible once its interoperability reaches a critical mass. At present, your ORCiD ID can autopopulate with new publications if you allow a connection with CrossRef which can then update other systems, e.g. Pure.
Many funding agencies and publishers support ORCiD as it enables them to track and correctly identify outputs from their awarded grants to the researcher. See for example: UKRI / Wellcome / NIHR / Royal Society / Wiley
Notably, ORCiD IDs have been recommended as mandatory for the REF exercise following REF 2021.
UKRI's Open Access Review consultation also proposes the use of ORCID to identify all authors and contributors.
ORCiD IDs use email addresses so if you are not sure whether you have an ORCiD ID, try registering and it will check against the email addresses in its system.
It will prompt you to sign in/request a password reset if it recognises an email address. If you register a second time with a different email address, ORCiD will assume you are a different person.
If you find you do end up with two accounts, ORCiD can merge these and ensure redirects are in place for the non-active account. Please also let us know if you think this affects you.
ORCiD can store more than one email address against a profile - useful when moving institutions.
ORCiD stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID. It was established in 2010 as an international, not for profit, community endeavour. Their website gives more details on their founding principles and privacy policies: Frequently Asked Questions about ORCID
Scopus Author Identifier
A Scopus Author ID is automatically generated the first time one of your publications is indexed in Scopus.
Benefits of Scopus IDs in Pure:
Your collaborating author affiliations in your Research Portal collaboration network maps are provided by Scopus data integrated to Pure. Accurate and up to date Scopus IDs are used in SciVal publications reporting.
To find your Scopus Author ID, search for your name or one of your publications within Scopus. You can then find your 'Author Details' page by clicking on your name when it appears on the search results list or a document details page. Your Scopus ID will appear as a number underneath your name and institutional affiliation.
Scopus ID FAQs
Authors with works indexed in Scopus are automatically assigned a Scopus Author Identifier. This is generated via an algorithm so it is possible you may have more than one Scopus ID e.g. if you have been affiliated with multiple institutions. You can find out how to merge these Scopus IDs below.
Adding your Scopus ID to Pure ensures your published works indexed by Scopus automatically feed into Pure joining up the ORCiD/Pure/Scopus triangle to ensure a cleaner data flow. If a Scopus ID is not added, Pure will continue to search Scopus for your works via a name search and add records it thinks are yours that would require disclaiming if they do not belong to you.
Maintaining your author profile in Scopus
The Scopus Author Identifier is an algorithm assigns each author in Scopus a unique number (your Scopus ID) and groups together all documents written by each author. This is in order to distinguish between authors with similar names which may appear in Scopus.
The process is automated and provided by Elsevier, but it is important for the purposes of discoverability and attribution that you check your author profile on Scopus to ensure that all the information there is correct. Issues with unchecked Scopus author profiles can include:
- Your work is listed under multiple author profiles
- Articles need to be added/removed
- The spelling of a name is incorrect
- Your affiliation is out of date or incorrect
Authors can ask Scopus to merge any duplicate profiles to ensure all papers authored by you (indexed in Scopus) are captured under the same profile ensuring improved attribution and better citation tracking. This can be done within Scopus itself (see: How do I correct my author profile? or via ORCiD when connecting Scopus to your ORCiD ID or via Pure.
You can find out how to make other corrections to your Scopus author profile - such as updating your affiliation, setting a preferred name, or adding/removing articles - in Scopus: How do I correct my author profile?