Your record: check it once a year, fix it in an afternoon

Errors in your scholarly record accumulate quietly — a split profile here, a wrong affiliation there — and each one costs you attribution.

Almost all of them are correctable, and an annual check catches them while they are still small.

What to check annually

• Search for yourself in the major sources for your field.
• Look for duplicate profiles — common and correctable.
• Look for works wrongly attributed to you — these matter more than missing ones.
• Check affiliation history, including past affiliations.
• Check your name appears in the form you use.
• An hour a year prevents most accumulated problems.

Common errors

• Split profiles from name variants.
• Merged profiles combining you with a namesake — the more damaging kind.
• Past affiliation overwritten by current.
• Missing publications, especially in less-indexed venues.
• Outdated contact details.

How to correct them

• Most systems have a correction route — find it and use it.
• Start with your persistent identifier record, which many others draw from.
• Report to the source, not only to the aggregator downstream.
• Keep a note of what you reported and when.
• Follow up if nothing changes.

Preventing them

• Use your persistent identifier on every submission.
• Use one consistent name form.
• Use the official institutional affiliation form.
• Add affiliations with dates rather than replacing.
• Update your identifier record when you move.

When you move institutions

• Add the new affiliation with a start date; do not overwrite the old one.
• Update your identifier record first.
• Use a durable contact address, not an institutional one you will lose.
• Watch for split profiles appearing over the following months.
• Overwriting is the most common and most damaging move-related error.

Adding what is missing

• Add outputs from less-indexed venues yourself — nobody else will.
• Add datasets and software with their identifiers.
• Add work in the local language.
• These are systematically missing from automated sources.

One thing worth remembering

Check for works wrongly attributed to you as well as missing ones.

A missing publication understates your record. A wrongly attributed one associates you with work you did not do — and that is a harder problem to notice and a worse one to leave.

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