ORCID, Scopus Author ID and Google Scholar profiles

Which researcher profiles does a PhD scholar need?

ORCID tells people “which person is this?” Scopus and Web of Science show what this person published in indexed sources and how much it is cited. Google Scholar shows what the person has written anywhere.

For most scholars three profiles are enough. ORCID, Scopus (it comes on its own) and Google Scholar. If your university or your subject leans more on Web of Science than Scopus, make a Web of Science ResearcherID also. Our comparison of Scopus and Web of Science helps you decide. Vidwan and IRINS come in when the university tells you to update them for NAAC or NIRF data. A few universities ask for this every year.

How do you create an ORCID iD?

Register at orcid.org with a personal email you will keep for years. Add the university email as backup, because many Indian universities disable student email once you leave, or recycle it. It takes around five minutes, and at the end you get a 16-digit iD that looks like 0000-0002-1825-0097 (this is the sample ORCID itself uses in its documentation).

After that, fill the record properly:

1. Name and other names. Put in every version of your name that is printed on your papers.
2. Employment and education. Give your university and department with the start dates. Pick the organisation from the list only, because then it gets linked to a standard identifier.
3. Works. Under “Add works” you can import from Scopus (through the Scopus to ORCID wizard), from Crossref, or by DOI. Avoid typing works by hand. An imported work carries its DOI and is cleaner.
4. Visibility. Mostly every item can stay on “Everyone”, hide only with a real reason. A private ORCID record is of no use to anybody.

Whenever you submit to a journal, give your iD. Most manuscript systems ask for it now, and some make it compulsory for the corresponding author. When the paper is published with your iD on it, Crossref can push it into your ORCID record by itself. For that you have to give permission through ORCID’s auto-update feature.

How do you find and correct your Scopus Author ID?

There is no registration for a Scopus Author ID. Scopus builds the author profile on its own when it processes an indexed document. For matching it looks at your name, affiliation, co-authors and subject area. So your profile turns up a few weeks after the first paper gets indexed. That delay in indexing is covered in our Scopus guide.

You can search your profile in the free author lookup on Scopus Preview. Type your surname and first name and filter by your university. You will see your Author ID (a long number), the list of your documents, your citations, and the h-index as Scopus calculates it. If these numbers confuse you, the calculation is in our guide to impact factor, quartile and h-index.

Why Indian scholars often have more than one profile

When your name or affiliation is not the same across papers, the algorithm breaks one person into two profiles. With South Indian naming, where initials come before the given name or after it, this keeps happening. Names spelt in different ways in English cause it too, and so does a move from a college to a university. The opposite also happens, where two people with one common name in the same university get merged. Both errors affects your publication count and your h-index, and selection committees really do check these.

Cleaning up your profiles

• Search every name variant. Indian names get split and shortened in so many ways. “Ramesh Kumar S.”, “S. Ramesh Kumar”, “Kumar, S.R.”, with the initial or without it. Search each one in free Scopus author lookup and write down every profile that belongs to you.
• Request a merge for the duplicates through the Scopus Author Feedback Wizard, and pick one preferred name there. The merge mostly shows up only after a few weeks.
• Remove papers that are not yours. With a common surname, Scopus many times joins your work with some stranger’s work. The same wizard lets you take those papers off.
• Fix the affiliation when Scopus is showing an old department name or a wrong spelling of your university.
• Connect Scopus to ORCID with the Scopus to ORCID wizard. Then your Scopus papers come into the ORCID record without retyping.
• Review Google Scholar’s additions every few months at least. Keep the setting where Google emails you to confirm before it adds an article, and delete whatever is not yours.
• Keep one standard form of your name in every paper from here on, and write your university’s name with the same spelling each time.

The Author Feedback Wizard works with a free Elsevier account. Your university needs no Scopus subscription for it. Scopus mails a confirmation for the request. If the fix is late, quote that mail when you follow up.

How do you set up a Google Scholar profile?

Sign in to Google Scholar with your Google account and click “My profile”. Fill your name, affiliation, areas of interest and university email. Next Google shows you a list of articles it believes are yours. Tick only the ones you wrote, then make the profile public.

Do these settings on the first day itself.

• Article updates: in settings choose “Don’t automatically update my profile”, and then Google mails you to approve each new addition. If you leave automatic updates on, Google can add papers of somebody with a name close to yours.
• Institutional email: once your university email is verified, the profile shows “Verified email at” and your university’s domain next to it. People trust it more, and it shows up better in search results also.
• Your thesis and preprints: sometimes Google has indexed your Shodhganga thesis or a repository copy of a paper. Add those to the profile, since it helps readers reach your full text.

Your Google Scholar citations and h-index will mostly be higher than what Scopus shows. Google takes citations from theses, preprints, books and journals that Scopus does not index. Neither number is wrong. Scopus counts only from what Scopus indexes, Google from whatever it found. When a form asks your h-index, write which database you took it from.

How should you keep your researcher profiles up to date?

Twice a year, maybe before each RAC meeting, give half an hour to your profiles:

1. See that each new paper is showing in Scopus (or Web of Science), and under your one single profile.
2. Check the paper has reached your ORCID record, and if it is not there, import it.
3. Approve the suggested additions in Google Scholar, or reject them.
4. If your university asks, update the Vidwan or IRINS profile with these informations.
5. Save a PDF or screenshot of every profile with the date visible. The research section, pre-submission committee or an interview panel asks you to prove indexing, and a dated screenshot answers them quickly.

Most profile problems start from a name written in different forms. So use one form of your name on every paper now onwards, and the same spelling of university and department.