Creating Author Profiles

Researchers may have past works published under a name that isn't correct for them anymore or misspellings of their name. Not only can this be personally painful, but it also makes it hard to have all of their research identified with them. This page covers:

• Resources for asking a publisher to correct your name on past publications and as it appears on their site
• Resources for identifying which publishers already have a name change policy in place
• Brief instructions on how to update the academic profiles covered in this guide with your correct name.

Because there are multiple reasons for and outcomes desired when altering your name on a profile, not all of the options described will be relevant to everyone. Choose what options work best for you.

The Name Change Policy Working Group has compiled and maintains an open list of publishers with name change policies in place.

Google Scholar

• Sign in to your profile at scholar.google.com, use the pencil button by the name to edit your name.

• For your publications, you can change how your name appears in the publication record on your profile by clicking on the item, clicking the edit button, then changing how your name appears.
• However, this only changes how your name appears on that item within your Google Scholar Profile. Contact the publisher to change your name on the item itself if that is something you need; see the Resources for Authors box for more information.
• If having an item with the wrong name for you on your profile is problematic, you could also always choose to delete (even temporarily) items that use the wrong name from your record until you are able to get them changed.

ORCiD

• Sign into your ORCiD profile

• In the Names section of your profile, click on the circular button with the pencil in it (the Edit button).
• Your Published Name is the name that appears at the top of your profile. Edit the name you would like your publications to be associated with and that heads your profile.
• Given Name is for the name you go by day to day, which might be different than your publication name. For example, an author might use Charlotte when publishing, but when you meet them at a conference they introduce themselves as Charley. Charley might want to list Charley as their Given Name, and Charlotte as their Published Name. This helps people familiar with either name correctly locate Charley's profile. These names can also be the same if you're using the same name in all settings.
• Published, Given, and Family names all have one visibility setting, by default this is set to everyone, but you can choose to hide or restrict access to this information.
• Also Known As name fields can allow you to list other names people might find you or your work under. This can be especially helpful for scholars who publish in multiple languages and have names in other characters sets. You can control the visibility of each of these Also Known As names individually.
• As with the other profile options, you can edit how an item appears on your ORCiD profile, but that does not edit the item itself. Contact the publisher if you need your name changed on an item. Additionally, if you allow ORCiD to make automatic corrections/updates using Crossref or other tools, changes you make may be reverted.

Scopus

• Sign into your Scopus account, locate your Author Profile, and select Edit Profile

• Unfortunately, you can only choose your preferred name from names you have already published under. Select your preferred name, then submit the changes to Scopus.
• This does not change your name on items themselves and someone viewing your profile would be able to see items under any name variants you may have had. Contact the publishers of your works to get you name changed on the items themselves if that is something you need.