The Author Challenge: Identification of Self in the Scholarly Literature

Considering the expansion of research output across the globe, along with the growing demand for quantitative tracking of research outcomes by government authorities and research institutions, the challenges of author identity are increasing. In recent years, a number of initiatives to help solve the author “name game” have been launched from all areas of the scholarly information market space. This article introduces the various author identification tools and services Thomson Reuters provides, including Distinct Author Sets and ResearcherID—which reflect a combination of automated clustering and author participation—as well as the use of other data types, such as grants and patents, to expand the universe of author identification. Industry-wide initiatives such as the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) are also described. Future author-related developments in ResearcherID and Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge are also included.