Your identity is the thread that connects your work

A researcher identity is the verified connection between you and every output you create. Get it right and your work is correctly attributed, discoverable, and credited to you — for jobs, grants, and reputation.

The core problem: names are ambiguous

Names are a terrible identifier. They change, abbreviate, and repeat. The same researcher can appear a dozen ways, and different researchers share the same name.

Worked example — one person, many names
A single author might appear in databases as: K. B. Romdhane · Karim B. Romdhan · K. Ben Romdhane · Karim Bin Romdhan. Meanwhile two different scientists may both be indexed as “J. Smith”. A persistent identifier — a stable ID that is uniquely yours — fixes both problems at once.

🔗 Learn more (free): ORCID — why researcher identifiers matter

Try it
Search your own name (or a common name like “J. Garcia”) in Google Scholar. How many different people seem to share it? That ambiguity is exactly what an identifier removes.

Self-check

Give two reasons a name on its own cannot reliably identify a researcher across databases.

© FRELIP, released under CC BY 4.0. Adapted in part from openly-licensed UNESCO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) and institutional research-support materials. Linked resources remain under their own licences. Curated by the FRELIP Open Courseware editorial team.

Última modificación: jueves, 4 de junio de 2026, 12:41