Unique Author Identifiers: Home

Welcome!

Setting up your unique author identifiers can be an important step in establishing your research identity.  Please use the tabs above to learn more about each type of identifier and information on how to register.

What is a Unique Author Identifier?

An author identifier is a unique identification number that stays with a researcher throughout his or her career.  Wherever he or she goes and whatever his or her name happens to be at the time, the number remains the same.  It is your unique scholarly identity.

Benefits:

• Allows you to establish a unique research presence
• Enables you to promote your research and advertise your publications.  You can add badges with your unique number to your email signature, webpages, blogs, and online CV's.
• Ensures you are getting credit for your work
• Helps link research with the correct authors
• Makes searching easier
• Allows you to search for collaborators.  You can easily evaluate an author's impact in the field.
• Helps clear up issues with naming.  Once an author claims their work, all of those publications will show up when searching by the unique author identifier number.
• Several authors can have the same name
• Several authors can have the same initials
• Different resources list authors in different ways
• An author's name can change over time
• Individuals change institutional affiliations

Many journals, institutions, and funding organizations have implemented unique author identifiers into their process.  Some of these include the National Instutes of Health (NIH), IEEE, U.S. Department of Energy Office Scientific and Technical Information, Modern Language Association (MLA), PLOS, Nature, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Oxford University Press.

ResearcherID is the identifier specific to Thomson Reuters.  Users can access citation data and metrics through Web of Science.  For help in setting up your ResearcherID and adding puplications, please see the tabs near the top of this page.

ResearcherID can be associated with ORCID and data can be shared between the two.  More detailed information about this can be found in the "Integrate ResearcherID and ORCID" tab found above.

Use these tutorials from Web of Science to learn how to create and use your ResearcherID.

Once you have created a ResearcherID, the next step is to set up an Open Researcher and Contributor (ORCID) ID.  ORCID is a non-profit organization that aims to create a registry of unique researcher identities with links to research activities and output.  ORCID is an open, community driven project that is not platform dependent. 

Google Scholar allows individuals to set up profiles with information similar to an online CV.  Individuals can add publications, profile information, contact information, and collaborators.  All you need is a Google account to get started.  Click on the "Set up your Google Scholar Profile" tab above for more detailed information on how to set up your profile.