Researcher and Author Profiles: Opportunities, Advantages, and Limitations

Abstract

Currently available online profiling platforms offer various services for researchers and authors. Opening an individual account and filling it with scholarly contents increase visibility of research output and boost its impact. This article overviews some of the widely used and emerging profiling platforms, highlighting their tools for sharing scholarly items, crediting individuals, and facilitating networking. Global bibliographic databases and search platforms, such as Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar, are widely used for profiling authors with indexed publications. Scholarly networking websites, such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, provide indispensable services for researchers poorly visible elsewhere on the Internet. Several specialized platforms are designed to offer profiling along with their main functionalities, such as reference management and archiving. The Open Researcher and Contributor Identification (ORCID) project has offered a solution to the author name disambiguation. It has been integrated with numerous bibliographic databases, platforms, and manuscript submission systems to help research managers and journal editors select and credit the best reviewers, and other scholarly contributors. Individuals with verifiable reviewer and editorial accomplishments are also covered by Publons, which is an increasingly recognized service for publicizing and awarding reviewer comments. Currently available profiling formats have numerous advantages and some limitations. The advantages are related to their openness and chances of boosting the researcher impact. Some of the profiling websites are complementary to each other. The underutilization of various profiling websites and their inappropriate uses for promotion of ‘predatory’ journals are among reported limitations. A combined approach to the profiling systems is advocated in this article.

Google Scholar Citation metrics of Pakistani LIS scholars: an overview

“…More recently, Gasparyan et al (2017) have provided a useful overview of both the widely used and emerging online profiling platforms, some of which are provided as a service by an ASNS. They have concluded that "Opening an individual account and filling it with scholarly contents increase visibility of research output and boost its impact" (p. 1749).…”

SPI-Hub™: a gateway to scholarly publishing information

“…The interface allows the user to input structured citation lists that may constitute an online curriculum vitae, including an ORCID identifier, an NCBI My Bibliography link, or the public uniform resource locator (URL) of a Zotero personal library or group [50][51][52]. This selection was informed both by prevalence of use [53][54][55] and by the provision of citation information via structured formats that can be parsed for comparisons to journals in SPI-Hub. Once journal matches are identified, the tool returns a list of hyperlinks to SPI-Hub records (supplemental Appendix D).…”

Integrity of Authorship and Peer Review Practices: Challenges and Opportunities for Improvement

“…Instead, requiring authors and reviewers to declare and link a universal researcher identification such as the Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID) may also help prove the veracity of the identity of such scientists. 33 43 Also, the use of reviewer lists from voluntary databases such as Publons, where many reviewers register profiles as well as many other journals directly upload peer reviewer names with their permission (with or without peer review reports depending on the journal policies), may increase the likelihood of identifying authentic peer reviewers, or verifying the identity of suggested peer reviewers. 44 Similar initiatives should be promoted by peer reviewers and editors together in the future.…”