Unique author ID projectChristopher Leonard

Authorid.comOne central registry for all authors in all of science

Run by a consortium of publishers and database providers a la CrossRef

Run along same lines as other sites such as LinkedIn.com

Basic author id, name(s) and publications are only required fields

Author can optionally add much more info to their own homepage (such as older publications, conference proceedings, email, homepage links, bio, cv)

Optionally make use of web2.0 technologies to create a community of researchers - but let’s keep it simple for now.

Author ID cannot contain name fragments (as this is part of the problem).Alphanumeric characters are fine: 6HX42E

Identifiers are public

Database can be queried from any interested information providers

As importance grows, researchers are more interested in making sure their details are correct - so can correct anomalies, omissions.

Authors can edit their details

All authors are offered randomly generated IDs if they don’t already havean author ID. Alternatively they can be offered ones when submitting to arxiv/journals [not just those with potentially confusing names]

Homepage on Authorid.com

Author ID: 34JH8PPreferred Name: Li YunAka: Yun Li, 李允立 , Yun-Li

Email: liyun@email.com [previous emails]

Current institute: Kavli Inst. Theoretical Physics [previous institutes]

Last 5 publications: [see all]

• Paper1 in JournalA [link]• Paper2 in JournalB [link]• Paper3 in JournalC [link]• Paper4 in JournalD [link]• Paper5 in JournalE [link]

Log-in / edit details

Co-author index: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Search

How might it look in print?

Online:IDs link to homepageson authorid.com

So how would it work?Author submits to arXiv/journals and supplies ID at the same time

arXiv/publishers can update database with this new publication

If no ID, arXiv/publishers can request a new one for that person which isassigned to this paper. Onus is then on author to update authorid.comhomepage to keep it up to date.

There will be cases which will need to be de-duped (1 author, multipleIDs) and these records would need to be merged by a person who canverify this - phone/email/etc.

Smart search URL structureswww.authorid.com/id/63FT2R > my unique authorid page

www.authorid.com/name/leonard > all records with ‘leonard’ in name field

www.authorid.com/inst/kavli > all records with ‘kavli’ in institue field [note:this is a free text field - not tackling institute IDs yet]

Can issue author IDs from this point on, but could also issuethem retrospectively - like DOIs for older scanned material

All information is public domain - why not?Will require some manual de-duping and investigative work though.

Author ID db

General public can readinfo in the db throughwebsite

Authors can update recordswhen validated

Web interface

arXiv & publishers can create & update records

Any interestedparty can querydatabase:

SPIRESHEPDATAADSCDS…Any developer

Authoritative, publisher-independent, open, free, scalable