Researcher identifiers and profiles: community standard networks to enhance global collaboration

Abstract

With ever increasing outputs of research and researchers it has become hard to differentiate all the intellectual outputs of a particular researcher with his/her name, disciplines, assignments or organization, which are not always constant in many ways. Unique researcher identifiers and profiles help the scholarly publishing community to associate the creators with their works in precise and unambiguous way to optimize the research discoverability at the global level. The study examines the needs and benefits of a unique identification number or an individual profile for a researcher and scrutinizes some of the popular researcher identifiers available. Merits of commonly used researcher identifiers and profiles are compared and the best among them is recommended in the study. ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is found to be the most efficacious unique researcher identifier among the scholarly community and is extensively used in many of the countries as a globally accepted tool.