Tools used by researchers.
Bibliography managers
In scientific activity, tools (so-called bibliography managers) with which you can collect scientific publications of interest, that is, create your handy workbench, prove to be an invaluable help. These tools and the literature database they organize will also find use when writing scientific publications – for automated creation of footnotes in the text and an appendix bibliography in one of thousands of citation styles. Thus, they allow you to easily adapt the formatting of the scientific apparatus to the requirements of a particular publishing house.
The following are available:
- Free tools: Zotero;
- Commercial tools, among which TUL Library recommends Mendeley and EndNote Web.
Identifiers of researchers
The identifier determines the unique identity of the author and at the same time eliminates the problem of misidentification of works.
Within a single account it allows to:
- assign different notations of the surname, first names and initials pertaining to a given author;
- add publications before and after the name change;
- merge data to obtain correct bibliometric data.
The identifier of a scientist is constant even when he or she changes workplace and thus affiliation. It is important in scientometric databases: it gives authors the opportunity to correctly shape their scientific portfolio and present achievements on the basis of two indicators: Impact Factor and Hirsch index, and number of citations.
Identifiers are also used to interact with external institutions: various organizations use them to improve the quality of citations and bibliographic records, to control publications and to authenticate on their own platform staff, editors and authors. They may be required when applying for grants. Publishers (e.g., IEEE, Nature Publishing Group, Biomed Central) use identifiers to obtain complete information about authors, their output and affiliations when they submit manuscripts.
Web of Science Researcher ID
Researcher ID is a unique identifier that distinguishes researchers in the Web of Science database. It provides the global research community with an invaluable collection of information about authors.
The Web of Science Researcher ID helps resolve author identity issues and enables proper linkage between a researcher and their publications in Web of Science.
The author profile in Web of Science Researcher ID provides:
- listing of indexed and non-indexed publications in WoS, as well as peer-review and editorial output,
- synchronisation with ORCID,
- editing of author name and affiliation,
- listing of award information,
- publicly available free version.
ORCID ID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) is an international, permanent researcher identifier that is widely recognised in the scientific world. It represents an open project that is not tied to any service, database or institution. It provides an amalgamation of data from various sources (easy import of data from ‘resources’ of competing identifiers, e.g. Researcher ID, Scopus Author Identifier, Google Scholar) to provide comprehensive information in one place.
It can be linked to various information about a researcher, e.g., education, affiliations, publications, reviews, ongoing grants, awards, scientific association memberships, etc. In particular, it allows linking to various publication information systems and automatic exchange between these systems and the ORCID service. In Poland, ORCID ID is used in the POL-on system.
Establishing a profile in the database allows you to:
- identify unambiguously of authors and co-authors,
- index properly the published articles,
- use ORCID number in databases and scientific portals,
- include additional information in the ORCID profile – biography, course of scientific career and many more.
The main advantages of the ORCID identification system are:
- unique identification of the author regardless of the place and type of publication;
- elimination of such problems as different versions of the name and surname, similar and duplicate names, name changes during the scientific career;
- independence from other identifiers;
- ability to link to profiles in other resources (e.g., reciprocal linking of ORCID IDs with profiles in Web of Science and Scopus databases).
Registration in the ORCID system is free for individuals and institutions. It can be made on the ORCID website.
Zarządzenie Nr 04/2018 Rektora Politechniki Łódzkiej z dnia 1 czerwca 2018 roku w sprawie kont ORCID dla nauczycieli akademickich w Politechnice Łódzkiej (access after logging in).
For information on ORCID ID, please contact the Electronic Resources Department of the Library of Lodz University of Technology (phone: 42 631 20 51, e-mail oze@lib.p.lodz.pl).
Scopus Author ID is an identifier created automatically by algorithms in the Scopus database. Its purpose is to distinguish authors with similar names by assigning a unique number to each author and grouping all documents written by a given author in the database's holdings.
The profile is automatically assigned to each author who has published at least two articles indexed in the database.
The author cannot add publications to his profile independently. On the other hand, he can submit corrections concerning, for example, the attribution of other people's publications, lack of linking to his own publications indexed in this database, errors in the affiliation of publications, etc.
Google Scholar Profile is a popular tool for presenting publication output. The service is easily accessible and automatically linked to results from the Google Scholar search engine. To operate the profile it is necessary to have a Google account and complete the fields with name, surname and affiliation.
The database allows you to create a compilation of the author's publications with their citations. When configuring the profile, there is an option to automatically update the list of publications.
Google Scholar Profile is linked to the Google Scholar Citations service which allows authors to track where and by whom their works are cited. It also allows you to automatically calculate the Hirsch index for an author.
Please note that Google Scholar Citations does not take into account alternative names and previous affiliations, nor does it show the number of total publications by a given author. To see how many publications an author has in the profile in total, you need to go to the last page of the author's publication list.
Google Scholar Profile is a source of data for bibliometric programmes (Publish or Perish, Scholarometer).
Other tools
Scholarcy is an artificial intelligence-based tool for summarising online articles.
With a free account, you can use Article Summarizer and thus generate up to 3 summaries per day. To get unlimited summaries and access to more features, you need to subscribe to Scholarcy Library (free trial account for 7 days).