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For more information or to schedule an individual or group consultation, contact the THL Research Impact Core.
Claiming or Setting Up Author Identifiers & Scholarly Profiles
Author identifiers are a unique series of numbers and/or letters that apply to one person, with the aim to disambiguate researchers with similar names. Scholarly profiles are webpages that provide an overview of employment and research interests, and often include a list of publications and other scholarly contributions and achievements. Scholarly profiles often use author identifiers to populate their content.
Why claim or set up author identifiers and scholarly profiles?
- Make your research and work more findable
- Share your expertise more broadly (including the public)
- Exert control over your online identity
- Increase impact
- May be required to by your institution or department
- Author identifiers increasingly required by funders and publishers
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Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)Platform where you can create a unique author identifier and associated profile.
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Scopus Author IDA unique ID that is assigned to any author that has a scholarly work present in Scopus; also used to create a scholarly profile within the platform.
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Web of Science ResearcherIDA unique ID that is assigned to any author that has a scholarly work present in Web of Science; also used to create a scholarly profile within the platform.
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Google ScholarIf you have a scholarly work indexed by Google Scholar, you can claim your profile.
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Michigan ExpertsUniversity of Michigan's research information management system; all faculty have a profile that they can choose to make public or not.
Recommended Practices - 5 Cs
- Claim your profiles
- Connect profiles where possible.
- Check privacy settings.
- Curate your profile content regularly.
- Add Character with a photo and/or more robust descriptions.
Engaging on Social Media
Social media, broadly defined, refers to digital and electronic platforms that support communication and allow content to be created and shared (Cabrera et al., 2017).
- Allen, K-A., et al. (2022). An Academic's Guide to Social Media: Learn, Engage, and Belong (pp. 3)
Why engage on social media?
- Make your research and work more findable by being where lots of other people are present online
- More actively share your expertise
- Connect with a broader audience, including the public and possible collaborators
- Cultivate a “brand” online, beyond just having a profile available
- Increase impact
Professional engagement on social media could include:
- Posts promoting work
- Posts of educational content related to area of expertise
- Connecting with colleagues and/or the public about work
- Commenting on or promoting accounts of interest to you professionally (journals, societies, funders, etc.)
- Participation in online “chats”
- Creation of online content (e.g. videos or images) for education or promotion of work
Recommended Practices - 5 Ss
- Set goals for social media engagement
- Select platforms that match your goals
- Specify privacy settings
- Spot best practices on your platforms of choice (hashtags, tagging, etc.)
- Share graphics by adding visuals to posts and using a professional photo
Note: Mentioning a particular social media platform here does not constitute endorsement.
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LinkedInLinkedIn is a professional profile/social media service. You can simply have a profile that links out to other pages that you keep up to date, or you can use it to share links or comments.
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X / TwitterX (formerly known as Twitter) can be used to engage with colleagues, institutions, and the public. Use #hashtags to make your posts (tweets) findable by others interested in specific topics.
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InstagramA social network focused on images and photos. A great platform if you often produce visually interesting work that you want to share publicly. Follow other people or institutions of interest, and use #hashtags to make your photos and images more findable.
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BlueskyBluesky is a growing microblogging social media site. It emerged as an alternative when Twitter became X.
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MastodonMastodon is a a decentralized social media site. It emerged as an alternative when Twitter became X.
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YouTubeYouTube is a platform for posting and sharing videos, especially ones that are longer than a minute or two.
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TikTokFocused on shorter video clips, TikTok is a popular social media site.
Workshop Recording: Managing Your Online Researcher Identity
In this video, Sara Samuel and Yulia Sevryugina provide an overview of some of the specific platforms that scholars use, such as ORCID, LinkedIn, Google Scholar, and more.
This webinar was initially presented live via Zoom on April 21, 2022.
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Researcher Identity Workshop TranscriptFull, accurate transcript from the video featured above on the topic of managing your online researcher identity.