For those that do not know what a researcher identifier is or what the advantages are, here is a quick rundown.
However I am constantly amazed at the lack of care factor that researchers show towards researcher identifiers. Don't get me wrong, some researchers "get it" and appreciate the importance of these characters. These are the ones that actively maintain their publications and add any missing ones. I love these researchers. But the other 90%....I just don't get it! I don't understand why they do not invest in the process.
The problem with Scopus:
Scopus is slightly different from the rest in that it is a system generated number assigned by Elsevier. When a publisher sends metadata to Scopus, a fancy algorithm tries to match the author based on name spelling, format and affiliation. If there is insufficient evidence to match with an existing author in the system, Scopus will automatically create a new one. You can see how it is very easy for authors to end up with multiple identifiers in Scopus. We recently did a "data cleansing" exercise in Scopus to try to identify and de-dupe multiple Scopus identifiers. I contacted each author to explain the situation and provided step by step instructions on what to do (I thought it was good that the author engages with the process so that they may then learn and keep on top of it themselves in the future). The most I found was one author that had 13 different identifies!! When you think about how much their research impact metrics were diluted out by having publications spread over 13 different identifiers, the mind boggles.
So why do researchers just not care? Is it that they are too busy, the process to complicated or do they just not understand the importance? Or maybe they just don't even know about researcher identifiers - no one has told them?
At USC we are trying to address the lack of care-factor with regards to researcher identifiers. A comprehensive online guide has been produced and is regularly updated (however the limitations of our website mean that it is not very discoverable). The librarians, when talking to researchers about outputs and metrics mention it. And we have even run a competition during our recent USC Research Week conference for a chance to win a $100 voucher for every researcher identifier reported to the Library. Emails to new staff ask if they have any researcher identifiers (from which we can obtain publications metadata for entry into our institutional repository, the USC Research Bank).
During the recent USC Research Week conference, the Library had a display encouraging researchers to think about their online research profile and what they can do to improve it. One of the most contentious posters was a "Top 10 @ USC" which listed the top 10 authors with, amongst other things, citations in Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. The bottom line is that if a researcher doesn't have a researcher identifier or has a poorly managed researcher identifier then their publications will not be able to be measured using conventional recognised metrics.
Perhaps an addendum to the Top 10 @ USC poster is to put "We really struggled to find you because you didn't have a researcher identifier".
