This week we continue our survey of persistent author identifiers with Thomson Reuters ResearcherID and Elsevier's Scopus Author ID. Unlike the independent ORCID and the Google-owned Google Scholar Citations, this week's subjects don't index all of your publications, just the publications included in their databases.

ResearcherID

ResearcherID is a Thomson Reuters product and is closely integrated with its Web of Science database. ResearcherID is a free service for researchers and allows you to build a publications list drawn from the Web of Science database and manually added items. Unlike the ORCID however, ResearcherID only allows you to add journal articles to the list, so any other research output is excluded. Once you've created your publications list, you can call up citation metrics from Web of Science for your work. You can also integrate your ORCID, so the two can be updated simultaneously. And through the ResearcherID Labs you can create visual Collaboration Networks and Citing Articles Networks created from Web of Science data. ResearcherID itself is a free service, though further use of Web of Science is contingent on your institution having access to Web of Science. As with ORCID you can determine what information about you is public or private, but it seems as if the level of control is less granular than that of ORCID.

The citation metrics generated through your ResearcherID are all drawn from the Web of Science Core Collection, which means that if a publication citing your work is not included in the Web of Science Core Collection it won't be counted. These are the metrics provided: citations distributed by year, total articles in publication list, articles with citation data, sum of the times cited, average citations per article, and h-index. While there is some overlap in the metrics provided by Google Scholar Citations, there might be some discrepancies in the numbers as Google Scholar Citations derives its data from the articles included in Google Scholar which indexes more broadly than Web of Science.

Since Leiden University has a subscription to Web of Science, you will be able to utilise all ResearcherID features and since Web of Science is one of the biggest databases that covers a multitude of disciplines, it's wise to create a ResearcherID profile for yourself and make sure that all your work is linked to you.

Scopus Author ID

The last author identifier up for discussion is Elsevier's Scopus Author ID. Part of Elsevier's Scopus database, this ID is automatically created for any author whose work is included in Scopus. You can't manage this ID yourself, though you can request that IDs be merged when you have more than one ID assigned to your work and you can request corrections to your information quite easily. Additionally, to get the full benefit of the Author ID, such as viewing the h-graph and the analysis of the author output, not to mention actually be able to click through to the articles themselves, you need to be able to access Scopus. Here in Leiden we're not actually subscribed to Scopus so you won't be able to access these features, but you will be able to check for your Author ID using this preview link and to connect it to your ORCID. While it is advisable to double-check whether an Author ID has been generated for you, especially if you are active in the (Social) Sciences or Life Sciences, the Scopus Author ID is the least accessible one for Leiden scholars.