Keeping Your Publication Profiles Current

Why this matters

The directory does not type in anyone's publication list by hand. Every paper, citation count and co-author shown on a faculty page is read from an author profile on OpenAlex, Google Scholar or Scopus. If a paper is missing from your directory page, or a paper that is not yours shows up there, the cause is almost always the underlying profile, and the fix is to clean that profile at the source. Once you do, the correction flows into the directory at the next data pull (the date of the most recent pull is shown on the Methodology page).

Here is what the directory reads from each source:

Source	When it is used	How you are matched
OpenAlex	Default for everyone	By name and institutional affiliation. An OpenAlex author ID is then stored, and all works attached to that ID are pulled.
Google Scholar	When a profile URL is on file and it represents you better than OpenAlex	By the profile URL (the user= ID in the address bar).
Scopus	For some faculty, mostly where OpenAlex is thin	By ORCID. The directory looks up the Scopus author profile linked to your ORCID record.

ORCID ties all of this together. OpenAlex uses it to disambiguate authors, Scopus links to it, and the directory itself uses it to find you on Scopus. If you do one thing after reading this page, make sure you have an ORCID iD at orcid.org, that your current employment is listed on it, and that your OpenAlex and Scopus profiles are connected to it.

Common names. If your name is shared with other researchers, expect all three services to make mistakes, and expect them to keep making mistakes as new papers appear. A ten-minute check twice a year is enough to keep things tidy.

OpenAlex

OpenAlex (openalex.org) is a free, open catalog of scholarly works. It is the primary source for this directory. Since 2024 researchers can claim their own author profile and fix it directly; you no longer need to email support for routine corrections. OpenAlex documents the process in its help center under Fixing authors.

Step 1: Find your profile (or profiles)

1. Go to openalex.org and search for your name. Switch the results to Authors if the search returns works.
2. Open the author page that looks like you. The address bar shows your OpenAlex author ID, which starts with A followed by digits (for example A5012345678). Note it down.
3. Search again with name variants: with and without a middle initial, maiden or former names, transliterated spellings, and initials only. OpenAlex splits people across multiple profiles far more often than it merges two people into one. Write down every ID that contains your papers.
4. On each profile, check the alternate names, affiliations and the works list. Sort works by year and look for anything that is not yours.

Step 2: Claim your profile

1. Sign in at openalex.org. Accounts are free. If you do not have one, create one. Add and verify your institutional email address on the account: claims from a verified academic address are approved automatically, while claims without one are reviewed by hand and take longer.
2. Open your author page and click Claim near the top of the page.
3. If your works are spread across several profiles, claim the one you intend to keep. Prefer the profile that already carries your ORCID and the largest share of your papers. You will move the rest into it in Step 4.

Step 3: Remove works that are not yours

On a claimed profile you can remove works one at a time or in bulk. Tick the works that are not yours and remove them. You do not need to say whose they are: OpenAlex's disambiguation algorithm re-homes removed works to the right author.

Two cautions:

• Do not delete a name variant to get rid of a few papers. Deleting an alternate name from your profile removes every work published under that name, including yours. Remove works individually instead. The alternate-name list is derived from the works and will clean itself up once the wrong works are gone.
• If a paper is genuinely yours but appears with a wrong affiliation or a garbled author list, that is a data error on the work rather than on your profile. Keep the work and report it through Fixing data errors.

Step 4: Add missing works

On your claimed profile, use the add-works option. You can add works in three ways:

• Search by title and tick the matching entries.
• Paste DOIs or OpenAlex work IDs, one per line. This is the most reliable route for journal articles.
• Upload your CV. OpenAlex parses the publication list and proposes matches, which is by far the fastest way to bring in dozens of papers at once.

Only works that already exist in OpenAlex can be attached to you. Nearly every journal article with a DOI is there. If a paper is missing from OpenAlex altogether, check that the publisher registered a DOI for it, then report it through the support page.

Step 5: Merge duplicate profiles

There is no merge button. Merging is done by moving the works:

1. Claim the profile you want to keep (Step 2).
2. Add every work from the duplicate profile to it. The CV upload, or pasting the DOIs from the duplicate's works list, does this quickly.
3. Once the duplicate profile is empty, it goes inert. It stops accruing new works and drops out of author matching, so it will not grow back.

After a merge, please tell us which ID you kept (see Tell the directory below). The directory stores your OpenAlex ID, and if it is holding the ID of the profile you just emptied, your page will look empty until it is repointed.

Step 6: Names, ORCID and affiliation

• Display name. Curators can change how the name is displayed and the full name used to match future works. Set the full name to the form you publish under most often.
• ORCID. Attach your ORCID to the claimed profile. As of this writing, OpenAlex exposes this through its curation API rather than a button on the website. If you are not comfortable with an API call, ask your library, or file a ticket via the support page and quote your author ID and ORCID. Attaching an ORCID does not by itself move works from other profiles; that is Step 5.
• Affiliation. Affiliations are derived from your works, so your current institution appears once your recent papers list it. The directory matches you on name plus institution, so a profile whose only affiliation is a former employer may not be found on a fresh lookup. Fixing the works fixes this.

Timing

OpenAlex applies curations at its next data refresh. Changes are usually live within one to two days. The directory then picks them up at its next data pull.

What you cannot fix yourself

• Someone else's profile. Claims are personal. To clean a colleague's or a student's profile, file a ticket via the support page and ask them to claim their own profile going forward.
• Works missing from OpenAlex entirely. Report them; they cannot be typed in by hand.
• Privacy. If you want your profile hidden, see Author profile privacy.

Scopus

Scopus (Elsevier) assigns every author a numeric Scopus Author ID automatically, and its algorithm splits people across IDs whenever a name or affiliation changes. Corrections go through the Author Feedback Wizard, described in Elsevier's support article How do I use the Author Feedback Wizard?. You do not need a Scopus subscription to use it, only a free Elsevier account.

Step 1: Find your profiles

1. If your institution subscribes to Scopus, go to scopus.com, open Authors search, and search by last name and first name or initial, optionally with affiliation.
2. If you do not have subscription access, use the free Scopus Author Lookup, which searches the same author database.
3. Search under every name variant you have published with. Note the Author ID of each profile that contains your work. It is common to find one large profile plus one or two small ones holding papers from a previous affiliation or an initials-only byline.

Step 2: Open the Author Feedback Wizard

1. Open the author details page of the profile you want to keep and choose Edit profile. (Depending on the entry point this may be labelled Request author detail corrections.)
2. Sign in with your Elsevier account or create one. Any email address works; you do not need an institutional one.
3. Indicate whether you are the author or are submitting on someone's behalf, then select Continue. The wizard opens with two tabs, Author details and Documents.

Step 3: Merge duplicate profiles

1. From the author search results, tick every profile that is yours and choose Request to merge authors. This opens the wizard with all selected profiles combined.
2. From the Preferred name drop-down, pick the name form you want shown.
3. From the Current affiliation drop-down, pick your current institution.
4. Review the combined document list. Use Remove from merge for anything that is not yours.
5. Select Review affiliation, confirm, then Confirm and Submit.

If you already opened the wizard from a single profile, you can still add another profile's documents to it through the Documents tab (next step). Scopus will merge the profiles when it processes the request.

Step 4: Add missing documents

1. In the wizard, select the Documents tab.
2. Below the list, select Search for missing documents on Scopus. You can search by article title, DOI, EID, PubMed ID or abstract text. The wizard may also show a list of recommended documents that its algorithm thinks are yours; tick the ones that are.
3. For each hit, confirm which name in the author list is you, then select Add document.
4. Select Review changes, then Submit request.

Only documents that Scopus indexes can be added. If a paper is not in Scopus at all (for example a chapter in a book Scopus does not cover), the wizard cannot help; you can ask Scopus content support to index the source, but that is a different process.

Step 5: Remove documents that are not yours

1. In the Documents tab, find the document and select Remove from profile.
2. Repeat for every misattributed document, then Review changes and Submit request.

Step 6: Connect your Scopus profile to ORCID

This is the step that matters most for the directory. The directory finds you on Scopus through your ORCID record, so an unlinked Scopus profile is invisible to it.

1. On your Scopus author details page, select Connect to ORCID (also reachable directly at orcid.scopusfeedback.com).
2. Sign in to ORCID when prompted and authorize Scopus.
3. The wizard walks you through selecting your profile(s), confirming your name and reviewing your documents. At the end it writes your Scopus Author ID into your ORCID record as an external identifier and, if you allow it, exports your Scopus publication list to ORCID as works.
4. Repeat this after any future merge so ORCID points at the surviving ID.

The link is a one-time export, not a live sync. Re-run it every year or two, or after a batch of new papers, to keep ORCID current.

Timing

Scopus reviews every request. Simple additions and removals usually take a few working days; merges and requests submitted without an institutional email can take one to two weeks. The wizard does not show your pending changes until they have been processed, so do not resubmit if nothing has changed after a day.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar profiles are self-maintained: nothing changes on your profile unless you (or an automatic update you have allowed) change it. Google's own reference is the Google Scholar Profiles help page.

Step 1: Set up the profile correctly

1. Sign in at scholar.google.com and click My profile. Use a personal Google account, not one issued by your university; institutional accounts are closed when you move and take the profile with them.
2. Add your institutional email under the profile's email field and click the verification link Google sends. Only profiles with a verified institutional address are shown in Scholar search results, and the directory reads the public profile page.
3. Make sure the profile is set to public. A private profile cannot be read by anyone, including the directory.

Step 2: Add missing articles

Click the + button above the article list. There are three options:

• Add articles searches Scholar for candidate papers by title, keyword or author name. Tick the ones that are yours.
• Add article groups shows clusters of papers Scholar has grouped under a name. Useful right after creating a profile.
• Add article manually lets you type in a paper that Scholar has not indexed. Fill in title, authors, venue and year, then Save.

Additions update your citation metrics immediately.

Step 3: Remove articles that are not yours

Tick the box next to each article and click Delete. Deleted items go to a trash folder, not into the void. If you delete the wrong one, click the + button, choose View trash, tick the article and click Restore.

Step 4: Merge duplicate entries

The same paper often appears twice: once as the journal version and once as a working paper or conference version. Tick both entries and click Merge. Choose the version whose details are correct; Scholar combines the two "Cited by" counts into one entry.

Step 5: Fix details

Click an article title, then Edit, to correct the author list, venue, year or title. Click Save. Edited articles are protected from being overwritten by later automatic updates.

Step 6: Control automatic updates

Click the + button and choose Configure article updates. You have two choices:

• Apply updates automatically. Scholar adds any new paper it attributes to you without asking. Fine for a rare name; risky for a common one.
• Email me updates for review. Scholar sends you suggested additions and you approve them one by one. This is the safer setting, and the one we recommend if you have ever found a stranger's paper on your profile.

Click Update settings to save.

Step 7: Two profiles for the same person

Google Scholar cannot merge two profiles. This usually happens when someone created a profile on a university account, later created a second on a personal account, and both are still public. The fix is to consolidate and delete:

1. Decide which profile to keep (the personal-account one, per Step 1).
2. Sign in to the profile you are keeping and use Add articles or Add article groups to bring in everything the other profile has. Compare the two lists side by side to check nothing was missed.
3. Sign in to the profile you are discarding. Open the menu (the three-line icon in the top-left corner), choose Settings, then the Account tab, and click Delete Scholar account. Confirm. This deletes the Scholar profile only, not the Google account.
4. Send the directory the URL of the profile you kept (see below).

If you can no longer sign in to the old account, for example because a former employer closed it, ask that institution's IT department to delete the account. A profile tied to a deleted Google account disappears from search within a few weeks. Google offers no support channel for Scholar profiles, so there is no one to email.

Tell the directory

After you have cleaned up, use the Faculty addition or correction form on the Contact page and paste the URLs or IDs of the profiles you want the directory to use:

• Your OpenAlex author page (the A… ID), especially after a merge.
• Your Google Scholar profile URL, if you would like Scholar used instead of OpenAlex.
• Your ORCID, if you have linked Scopus to it and want Scopus considered.

The directory pins those IDs to your record so that future data pulls use the right profile even if the automatic name lookup would have picked another one. Corrections appear after the next data pull.

Checklist

	OpenAlex	Scopus	Google Scholar
Find all my profiles	Search name variants on openalex.org	Author search or free Author Lookup	One per Google account
Take control	Claim on the author page	Edit profile → Author Feedback Wizard	Sign in, My profile
Add papers	Title search, DOI paste, CV upload	Search for missing documents on Scopus	+ → Add articles / manually
Remove papers	Tick and remove	Remove from profile	Tick and Delete
Merge duplicates	Move works into the kept profile	Request to merge authors	Not possible: consolidate, then delete the extra
Link to ORCID	Via curation API or support ticket	Connect to ORCID	Not supported
Time to apply	1–2 days	A few working days to two weeks	Immediate