Accurate research impact metrics such as article citation counts and H-index in Web of Science, currently depend on artificial intelligence as well as human curation to help make data as clean as possible. Now, researchers may provide suggested edits to Web of Science author records (for themselves and others), including affiliation and publication data. This is especially important for author disambiguation.
Part of this process involves using Publons, an online platform for tracking publications, citation metrics, peer reviews, and journal editing work in a single, easy-to-maintain profile.
To update author records
A. Create a Publons account (you may log in with your EndNote online or Web of Science credentials)
- Link it to your ORCID by first navigating to the "Connected Accounts" tab from the Account settings page
- To automatically import publications from ORCID into Publons, go to "Settings," then "Permissions" and check the box to "Keep my publication list up to date with my ORCID record"
- Save the changes
B. Additionally (after part A), you can search for publications in Web of Science to link them to Publons
- Search for an author by name or unique ID in Author Search
- Select one author record OR select multiple recors then "View Combined Record"
- If you are the author, select "Claim this Record" to edit the record(s) in Publons, which automatically sends a request for Web of Science to make updates
- If you are NOT the author, but a registered Web of Science user, select "Correct the Record" to suggest edits. Users will be asked to provide their relationship to the author.
Note: Users will be emailed upon submission of suggested edits and again when an outcome is reached. Through these processes, authors are also assigned Web of Science ResearcherIDs.
After following these steps, updating ORCID will update Publons, which will update Web of Science.
To automatically export your publications from Publons to ORCID
- Under "Settings" and then "Permissions," click on "Link your ORCID" and follow the steps to link it to Publons
- Once it is linked, navigate back to the Permissions page and select "Grant Publons permission to update your ORCID works"
- Confirm the authorization request
- Select "Export Publications to ORCID now"
With so much author and publication data within these tools, it truly takes a village to help ensure accuracy for bibliometric and research impact analyses. The data will never be perfectly clean, but as a research community we can help each other to have much more reliable data.