What are the various author identifier systems?
The following Author identifier and/or profile systems were identified and described by the ODIN project. They are derived from a commonly seen list of tools that researcher are using to manage their scholarly record. See https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1373669.v1 for more information.
Scopus ID
- Algorithm based author identifiers and profiles
- Based on affiliation, subject area and other author characteristics
- Author search is inaccessible to non-subscribers
- There is an extensive API
- Some authors have multiple Scopus profiles, especially if the author works in multiple disciplines or institutions
- No direct editing or claiming but author feedback allows for amendments to profiles
- A tool is provided to pull the publications from a Scopus author profile into an ORCID profile
- Service provided by Elsevier and integrated with their other products such as Mendeley
- Notably used by the UK research excellence framework (REF)
ResearcherID
- User or institution created author identifiers and profiles
- User populated
- Can create bi-directional links with ORCID profiles
- Has a process in place to settle inaccurate claim disputes
- An API is provided, but documentation currently unavailable for assessment
- Service provided by Thompson Reuters and heavily integrated in their other products
- Around 270k identifiers.
ORCID ID
- User driven identifier service
- Users can create, manage and edit their publishing history and import from various other systems
- Institutions can create blocks of identifiers and ask authors to ‘claim’ them
- Extensive search and authentication API with various open source client implementations
- Update rights via the API require membership
- More than 4 million identifiers
- Open, sustainable and community governed
arXiv Author ID
- Discipline specific (High Energy Physics) author identifier and profile
- Author identifiers are intended to disambiguate papers within the arXiv repository
- User created and maintained, semi-automatically populated
- API unknown
RePec Author Service
- Discipline specific (Economics) identifier and profiles
- Users claim from a list of research outputs provided by academic publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley Blackwell, CEPR and institutional archives
- There is no API
- Used by RePEc services
PubMed Author ID
- Development announced in 2010 and abandoned in 2014 in favour of external identifiers provided by publishers
- Update specifically mentions ORCID iDs
Google Scholar Profiles
- User driven, semi-automated author profiles
- Initial import is algorithm based with the ability for users to add and remove works
- Continuous algorithmic profile updates possible
- Requires a verified institutional email to make public
- There is no API, and rate limitations and T&C prevent scraping, no interoperability features
- Manual user driven export possible
- Not intended as an author identifier
- Provided by Google and integrated with Google Scholar
Microsoft academic research ID
- Provides human editable automatically generated author profiles with attached unique identifiers
- Provides other tools such as co-author visualization, profile merging and citation counts
- In contrast with Google Scholar, Microsoft do offer an API
- It is limited by terms and conditions to non-commercial, academic-only use.
AuthorClaim
- Non-discipline specific author disambiguation and profiles
- Generates author output profiles
- Based on RePEc Author service
- Users claim from a list of research outputs provided by publishers and repositories including Crossref, ArXiv and PubMed
- There is no API, but data is available as bulk download in CC0
- Venerable, in operation since 1992
- Funded by the Open Society Institute
JISC Names
- Automatic author disambiguation system with manual intervention and quality assurance
- Generating identifiers and associated research outputs
- Ran from 2007 until 2013
- Collected data now submitted to ISNI
- Codebase now open source
ISNI
- Semi-automatically derived from library catalogues and other trusted sources using human intervention for quality control
- Institutions that are members can submit data for matching and ISNI creation. Provides searchable interface and extensive query API
- Not user editable, although users can suggest changes to existing profiles
- Intended to be an authoritative source of authorship identifiers
- Used to maintain professional resume and publication lists, and network with co-authors and funders
- Frequently mentioned when discussing author identifiers with researchers
- Positioning itself as an identity authority as well as profile management tool
- Mature API for identity and profile.
Mendeley Profiles
- User driven and populated author profiles with social networking/collaboration features Manual creation and import
- Both desktop and mobile software and a service
- Public API
- Not intended as an author identifier
- Provided by Mendeley/Elsevier
- Around 3 million profiles
ResearchGate
- Academic social network and collaboration platform for researchers, institutions and publications
- Users can manage their publishing and work profiles and create connections
- Provides sharing and citation metrics
- Open Query API, no update API
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