Scholarly Communications Librarian
Building Up Your Scholarly Identity Online
Why do you need a scholarly identity online?
Why do you need a scholarly identity online?- Eliminate misidentification (e.g. name ambiguity, moving between organizations etc.)
- Connect you to all your research output across platforms
(e.g. publications, presentations, data sets, codes, and collaborative projects etc.) - Fulfill requirements from funding agencies and publishers (e.g. Publishers require ORCID iD)
- Showcase your work collectively and track your research impact
- Network with peers for collaboration and career opportunities
- Engage with professional discussion and resource sharing
When people Google your name, pages with your scholarly contributions are more likely to show up in the result if you have established your scholarly identity online.
This guide page will help you:
- Create and populate ORCID profile
- Use your ORCID iD
- Understand other profile and network tools and know what not to share
Scholarly Identification, Profile, and Network
Scholarly Identifier and Profile
- ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifierprovides researcher with a unique, 16-digit ID, which can be kept throughout your career and connect you with your research output. ORCID.org is a non-profit organization dedicated to connect researchers with research.
- Google Scholar CitationsGoogle Scholar will generate a list of publications from sources it indexes and show an h-index for your profile. Follow the link above to setup your Google Scholar Citations profile.
- Scopus Author IdentifierHosted by Elsevier database, Scopus. Scopus Author Identifiers are part of Scopus author profiles. If you have published in a journal that is indexed by Scopus, you are automatically assigned a Scopus Author Identifier. Search your name using the Author Search on the linked page above and choose your name from the results. You may request merge profiles if there are multiple records under your name. Link your Scopus Author Identifier to ORCID
- Web Of Science Researcher ProfilesLeverage the Web of Science database to create a profile of your research. Use the Join Now link on the page linked above to request a registration invitation link. You can then fill in your profile information and add your publications from Web of Science and link to ORCID.
Scholarly Profiles and Network
- Mendeley profile
A reference management tool and an academic social network from Elsevier. You can manage your reference, populate your publication profile, connect and collaborate with other researchers. Can link to your ORCID and Scopus Author Identifer.
- ResearchGate
A for-profit platform for building research profiles, sharing publications, collaborating on projects, getting usage stats, and network for career development. There may be advertisement. Be careful with what content you can share there without infringing copyrights.
- Academia.edu
A for-profit platform for sharing publications and networking with other researchers. There may be advertisement. Be careful with what you can share there without infringing copyright.
- Microsoft AcademicAn semantic search-based platform from Microsoft that indexing publications. You can Claim your profile by creating an account. Read more at https://academic.microsoft.com/#/faq . Does provide free API service to export data.
Your ORCID profile can be linked to Scopus Author Identifier, ResearcherID, and Mendeley profile. Your publication information can be exchanged among these profiles.
- Pivot-RPA curated funding opportunity database hosted by ProQuest that includes searchable scholar profiles. Updating your profile will lead to more relevant funding opportunity suggestions from Pivot, and allow Pivot’s extensive user-base of over 3.6 million researchers to identify you as a potential collaborator on relevant topics. To get started, follow the link above, log in using your Mines credentials, claim your profile, and connect your ORCID iD to automatically update publications.
Which Profiles to Maintain?
It can be overwhelming to maintain all the scholarly profiles online. When the infrastructure grows more mature, all the profiles may talk to each other and get automatically updated. Ideally, ORCID could be the hub of information exchange due to its non-profit nature and organization purpose. Therefore, here are a few factors to consider when you decide which online profiles to maintain.
- Connectivity - Can it be connected to ORCID?
- Transparency
- Do I have control over the profile data?
- Is the data sharing mechanism transparent?
- Is the scope of the metrics tracking clearly defined or accepted by your research community? Do I understand its limitation?
- Privacy
- Will I receive too much advertisement and solicitation?
- Do I have control over how the data will be used?
- Discoverability - Will the profile be ranked as a top site in a web search result?
- Collaboration - Do your collaborators, peers, and potential employers use them?
- Compliance - If the platform allows fulltext sharing, will there be tools help me determine what I can share without infringing copyright?
Can you post fulltext copies of your work online?
Many profile and network services allow you to upload a fulltext copy of your publication. Some of them, such as ResearchGate and Academic.edu, would actively solicit fulltext uploading from you when other users clicked the "Request a copy" button in your profile. However, these sites rely on you to determine if you have the rights to share the fulltext publicly. Many academic authors transfer their copyrights to the publishers upon publication and may not have the right to post the fulltext copies to those websites.
To find if you have the rights to post the fulltext PDF or peer reviewed manuscript version of your article, please check the copyright transfer agreement with the publishers. There are two tools below to help you determine what rights you may have retained for different journals.
- How can I Share ItA collaborative project among STM (International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers) publishers to provide article-level information on how you can share, where you can share and recommendations for sharing sites where you can engage and collaborate with the research community.
- Sherpa Services - Publisher copyright policies & self-archivingFind a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.
Read more about copyright at libguides.mines.edu/copyright/permission .