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Academic Writing Guide

Your guide to academic, scholarly, and professional writing in your health care career.

Academic Writing Guide

What Is an Author Profile?

An "author profile" is the association of all your scholarly output (papers, presentations, etc.) with your name. Your name is foundational to being discovered and recognized: it establishes your unique professional profile, which stays with you throughout your research and academic career. This is key to future funding and professional opportunities.

Important: To ensure that published works are properly attributed to you and that everything is together in one place, you should regularly review your profile(s) at least annually to keep them updated.

Why Create and Maintain an Author Profile?

An author profile provides the following benefits:

  • Differentiates you from other researchers with identical or similar names
  • Attributes your scholarly activities to you and takes into account name changes and/or other institutional affiliations
  • Increases the visibility of your scholarly activities to grant funders and potential collaborators
  • Improves accuracy of author level metrics
  • Streamlines keeping track of scholarly activities (if regularly maintained)

It is beneficial to your professional image to be proactive in managing your profile. Your researcher profile functions as a persistent identifier and follows you throughout your career. This unique identifier links your scholarly activities, including publications, presentations, editorial or peer review, and other research contributions.

Note: The term “author” can be interchanged with researcher, academic, scholar, or equivalent.

How and Where Do I Create an Author Profile?

An ORCID iD is required by some national or international organizations for grant-funding requests and for submitting articles to most submission platforms. For more information and to get started, review the following Library guide:

Various other profiles may be created depending on your needs: e.g., Scopus Author Identifier, Web of Science Researcher ID, and SciENcv. It is also important to note that the Scopus Author Identifier or Web of Science Researcher ID includes citation counts and author metrics based on the journals indexed in their respective databases.

For more information or to get started, see the following Library guide: