Author identifier catalogue

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
 2.2 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 ORCIDs

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

Linkedin
 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