Identify Yourself!

We all possess a multitude of ID cards, PINs and passwords for most aspects of our lives. Nevertheless, Matthew E. Falagas thinks there is still one missing: an Unique Author Identification Number (UAIN) for scientists. In PloS Medicine, the director of the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences (AIBS) in Athens, suggests every researcher should have one to help track individuals' work. By Brynja Adam-Radmanic

Why do we need such a number? Well, if you've ever searched Pubmed or an ISI database for a list of publications by a given person, you're likely to have experienced that common names are not necessarily the best search strings. "It takes considerable effort and time to assign publications to the appropriate authors, particularly if these authors share the same last name and first initial", Falagas states in PloS Medicine (1).

So far, when trying to keep up-to-date with other colleagues' work or wanting to take a look at a researcher's publication history for peer-review, a database search for the papers of a particular John Smith can result in a time consuming attempt to find additional pieces of information that differentiate this "Smith, J" from all the other researchers with the same name. "This is usually based on the pattern of research interests, as well as institutional affiliations", Falagas writes.

However, as interests and work places of a scientist tend to change, a search based purely on this information often only provides an incomplete picture. So why not create a unique identifier that can overcome this problem? With the help of the suggested Unique Author Identification Number (UAIN) searches in electronic databases could yield a list of publications for specific individuals.

In an affirmative response to Falagas' suggestion, Etienne Joly from the Institut de Pharmacologie et de Biologie Structurale in Toulouse, lists several other important advantages a UAIN system would provide (2). He writes, "When looking up someone's publications, the fact that the last name of a given person can vary from one paper to another can be as much of a problem as that of multiple authors with the same name."

For instance, there's the woman who changes her last name after getting married (or divorced), the man that only sometimes uses his middle initial. There are plenty of examples for the problem, which arises when last names composed of several terms appear in databases split or truncated. Then there's the problem with different transcriptions from non-Roman alphabets and from Roman alphabets with letters unknown in English. And to find all papers of a person with a German name like Müller you might have to search for Müller, Muller and Mueller....

An UAIN could help to merge the datasets of the same person, so that it can be found in one search step. However, as much as Falagas and Joly agree upon the need for an UAIN, their vision of the practical implementation of such an identifier is very different. Whereas Falagas recommends prospectively registering scientists with the UAIN from the moment of introduction onwards, Joly urges that it be expanded and backdated to include older datasets, too. "It is clearly in every scientist's interest to facilitate the job of other people who want to look up their work. I therefore believe that authors could be asked to register for an UAIN, and to validate their list of publications themselves, retroactively", he states.

Falagas and Joly are also at odds with each other when it comes to the transparency of the UAIN. Falagas imagines it to be used by the providers of the databases only. It should help to merge the data in the background but be invisible to the users. In contrast, Joly proposes an open use of the system. He thinks the UAIN should be visible to all, easy to remember and communicate to others.

Certainly, the problems of unambiguously identifying the work of an individual in the electronic databases are likely to increase significantly in the years to come. The number of scientists in the world is still expanding and with it the scientific literature. And there are increasingly more databases. But are the problems big enough already to spark a major discussion in the scientific community? Lab Times is curious. What do you think?

Should every researcher be issued with an UAIN? Maybe something like JOLY-E-89-01, as suggested by Joly. His recipe would be to take the first four or five letters of the last name, the initial of the first name, the year of first scientific publication and an incremental number depending on order of registration. "It would be something quite comparable in length and spirit to a car's licence plate and, like UK licence plates, it would provide an interesting clue regarding the seniority of its bearer", Joly writes.

Comments to editors@lab-times.org.

(1) Falagas ME (2006) Unique author identification number in scientific databases: A suggestion. PLoS Med 3(5): e249. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030249

(2) Joly E (2006) Further advantages of a Unique Author Identification Number. PLoS Med 3(8): e368. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030368