Online identity

Curating your digital identity

Research indicators are metrics such as citation counts and mentions. They are used to make funding and other decisions by:

  • Funders
  • Publishers
  • Institutions
  • League table producers
  • Government agencies
  • Other researchers
  • Members of the public

online-identity-diagram

Our recommended five steps

This guide will help you to curate your online identity to ensure you showcase your research as effectively as possible. Start by building your profiles across WorkTribe, ORCID and Scopus. ORCID is an important ID that is being used by many different stakeholders in the research ecosystem. Spending time on ResearcherID (Web of Science) and Google Scholar will also enhance your online identity further. 

Step one: Worktribe

What? Why?

WorkTribe is the University of Stirling research information system which aims to collect information about your research and make this easily accessible via the Research Hub.
HEFCE requires all published articles and proceedings submitted to the post 2014 REF to be open access. Self-archive your final draft manuscripts in WorkTribe immediately on acceptance to ensure compliance. Your entries are checked by the library for copyright compliance.

How?

Login at https://stirling-research.worktribe.com. Under Outputs click Add New Output. In many cases you will need to use the Add Outputs Manually
option.

Worktribe interface screenshot

More help is available here.

Step two: ORCID

What? Why?

ORCID is the Open Researcher and Contributor ID, connecting you with your outputs and affiliations, and improving recognition and discovery.

It is used by a wide range of agents in the research lifecycle – you may be asked for ORCID as part of grant applications, when submitting articles to journals, etc. ORCID is Open Source, not for profit and is strongly encouraged for REF2021.

How?

In Worktribe, go to My Profile and select the Details tab. Select Edit Profile and Add your ORCID ID to the field entitled ORCID in the 16 digit format: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. 

worktribe screenshot

Then click on Update. WorkTribe automatically adds the ORCID URL to your profile, e.g., https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0072-053X. See further information on Using your ORCID ID.

Step three: ScopusID

What? Why?

ScopusID is an identifier used specifically by the Scopus database and helps researchers manage publication lists and view citation and other metrics. Scopus data feeds into departmental/institutional profiles on SciVal, and contributes to Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Scopus ID is particularly useful for those who have changed their surnames, people who have moved institution, or people based in both Stirling and NHS or other organisations, and people working in cross disciplinary areas.

How?

Scopus IDs are created automatically in Scopus. Link your ScopusID into your ORCID by signing into ORCID, Works, +Add Works > Search & Link, select Scopus - Elsevier.  Authorise for Scopus to ORCID to have access to your record.

scopus dashboard

Work through the 6 stage process to select profiles, names, review publications (from here you can accept/reject any publications and search for any missing documents), send the Author ID (to ORCID), and send publications. It takes a week or so for your changes to be authorised and implemented in the database.

Step four: ResearcherID

What? Why?

ResearcherID integrates with the Web of Science and is ORCID compliant. It provides a solution to the author ambiguity problem by assigning each member a unique identifier to enable researchers to manage their publication lists, track their times cited counts and h-index and identify potential collaborators using Web of Science data.

How?

From ORCID, Works, click +Works, select Search and Link, then ResearcherID.

• If you already have a ResearcherID, login to www.ResearcherID.com (check this by looking at the author information on Web of Science).
• New users can ‘Join now it’s free’. Create your profile.

An invitation will be emailed to your mailbox, click on the link to complete the process. Associate your ORCID with ResearcherID, click ‘authorise’ - data can then be exchanged between ORCID and ResearcherID.

researcher ID screenshot

Build your publication list – ensure that all of your publications have been attached to your ResearcherID.

Please note it can take up to 14 days for changes in ResearcherID to be fully reflected in Web of Science. 

Step five: Google Scholar profile

What? Why?

Google Scholar profiles enable you to gather your publications together, and for Google Scholar to generate citation metrics on those publications.  

Recommended for Arts, Humanities and Social Science researchers as Google Scholar has more coverage of books and foreign language material than Scopus and Web of Science.

How?

At https://scholar.google.co.uk/, click “Sign in” (if you do not have a google account, click More to create one).

At the top left of the screen, click on ‘My profile’ – your profile will open. 

Edit your list of publications by selecting, then deleting any that are not yours, and click on the + to add articles.  Add a photo if you wish. Ensure you click on MAKE PUBLIC to ensure that your profile will be visible to Google users.

Further help

For further help, contact the Library and Archives Research Support team.