Research profiles help you manage your scholarly identity and increase the visibility of your scholarly and creative work.
Maintaining scholarly profiles can be time-consuming, especially if you have multiple profiles. When choosing a platform, consider what researchers in your field commonly use, as well as any funder requirements or recommendations from professional organizations. For example, ORCID is sometimes required by federal funding agencies, and many publishers recommend it. If you are unsure which profile platform to use, consult with your subject librarian or the Libraries' Research Impact Team to explore your options.
With many profile options available, it's important to be selective. Set up only as many profiles as you can realistically maintain. Some key tenets of maintaining a profile are:
The following profiles are highly visible and can have significant impact on driving traffic towards your works. In the case of ORCID, it is often required by funders and publishers.
There are several auto generated profiles, which are based on content indexed within large literature databases like Scopus and Web of Science. We highly recommend monitoring these profiles for accuracy.
ORCID stands for Online Research Contributor iD. ORCID is a freely available tool for researchers, scholars, authors, or professionals who want to share and track their work. It is an essential tool for anyone involved in publishing, scholarly or creative work, research, conference presentations, or grant applications; and it is used across disciplines. We highly recommend that all scholars should have an ORCID profile.
When creating an ORCID account, an online profile of your scholarly works is automatically generated, helping to increase your visibility as a researcher/scholar.
Your ORCID can be linked to Syracuse University's ORCID instance by updating your current "Employment" in ORCID to Syracuse University. This helps to correctly affiliate your publications, research, and scholarship with the University.
Your ORCID profile can be used to auto-populate your published scholarship in Syracuse University's Faculty Portfolio System (FPS).
ORCID can be used to auto-populate your publications and scholarly activities when submitting grant applications, and is compatible with SciENcv, NSF Biosketch, and ProposalCentral.
Include your ORCID when submitting manuscripts via publishers websites, or include it with conference submissions.
Add your ORCID to your email signature, CV, and research profiles such as LinkedIn and Google Scholar.
A best practice when setting up your ORCID is to link to services such as Web of Science ResearcherID, CrossRef, Scopus, and widely used literature databases and scholarly profiles. This integration helps automate profile u[dates and saves tome by reducing duplicate data entry across systems. To get started, check out this ORCID video or this step-by-step guide.
Per the federal memorandum, NSPM-33, individuals applying for federal funding must use a Persistent Identifier (PID). Currently, ORCID is the only PID that meets these requirements. Additional details about the memorandum are provided by ORCID and Lyrasis.
Please see the following research guide for additional information on ORCID, like how to set up your profile, import your works, or connect to SciENcv:
If you have questions about ORCID, reach out to your subject librarian or send a message to the Research Impact Team.
Google Scholar Profiles are used for tracking citations from Google Scholar content. It is highly recommended for all disciplines, as it tracks citations from a variety of sources such as articles, ebooks, conference papers, grey literature (e.g., technical reports and patents), and content in online repositories.
Your Google Scholar Profile will include a list of your works with "Cited By" links for each of them. It will also display a graph of your citation activity by year and calculate your total number of citations, h-index, and i10-index. Because Google Scholar citation counts are based on crawling web content, which is ever changing, Google Scholar Profile citation counts will expand and contract over time. Your Google Scholar Profile is private by default, but it is recommended that you make it public on your profile page to enhance the discoverability and visibility of your works.
Setting up your Google Scholar Profile is a straightforward process that should not take a large amount of your time.
1. To start, go to Google Scholar Profiles:
2. Click "Set Up Your Google Scholar Profile" and login with your Google/Gmail account, which is required to set up a profile.
3. Check details and enter your affiliation, research interests, and websites.
4. Select your works from the automated list prompt of potential matches. The selected works will be added to your profile.
5. There is an option to have works added automatically from Google Scholar Profiles, as it tracks potential works to add to your profile, but it is recommended that you select the option to be contacted via your Google/Gmail account to claim the work as yours before the work is added to your profile. This will ensure accuracy while requiring minimal maintenance by you. Citations to your works are automatically tracked and added to your profile.
6. Verify your profile via email.
7, Upload your photo.
8. Make your profile public for added visibility. Your profile will be discoverable via a search for your name or works.
1. Check email notifications from Google Scholar Citations for citation updates regarding new citations to your works and suggestions for changes.
2. Your profile displays the number of citations of your works. Click the number to gather additional context about who is citing you, the publication in which you are being cited, and in what context your work is being cited.
3. Options for Adding Works
Scopus is one of the largest indexing and abstracting databases of scholarly literature. Scopus indexes a distinct collection of journals, with some overlap with other databases like Web of Science. Scopus automatically generates an ID for authors who have published at least two articles in journals indexed by the database. The system matches profiles based on factors such as name, email, affiliation, subject area, citations, and co-authors, with updates made daily. Review your profile regularly to track the attention of your work and verify the accuracy of attributed publications. Scopus serves to reflect your academic reputation and impact, but also enhances networking and collaboration opportunities, strengthens your CV, and adds valuable context to grant applications. Follow these instructions to see whether you have a Scopus ID.
Managing research profiles is easier when they are linked. Since Syracuse University has an institutional ORCID account that directly feeds into the FPS system which generates your University CV, it’s beneficial to connect the two profiles. You can link them in two ways:
This resource provides tips and step-by-step videos on how to manage your profile:
Web of Science is one of the largest indexing and abstracting databases of scholarly literature, differing from Scopus in that it indexes a distinct collection of journals, with some overlap. Maintaining an updated researcher profile in Web of Science is important for ensuring consistent visibility across the research landscape and for tracking your global impact. The platform aggregates scholarly information, connects authors to preprints, links research to citations in patents, and provides visualizations to showcase academic impact. Researchers can maximize the benefits of their data, submit profile corrections, and integrate their Web of Science profile with ORCID for seamless connectivity and auto populating FPS profiles. Web of Science automatically creates researcher profiles for authors.
For creating, claiming, or editing your profile visit this page:
Managing research profiles is easier when they are linked. Since Syracuse University has an institutional ORCID account that directly feeds into the FPS system which generates your University CV, it's beneficial to connect the two profiles. Web of Science auto-updates ORCID every two weeks. Follow the following steps to set this up from your Web of Science profile:
Despite its .edu domain, Academia.edu - like ResearchGate - is a commercial, for-profit platform for research profiles, social networking, and file sharing sites. Because these platforms are considered controversial, you may want to explore other options.
If you are considering setting up an Academia.edu or ResearchGate profile to increase your research visibility, consider setting up your ORCID or Google Scholar Profile instead.
If you are interested in collecting research metrics through Academia.edu (including those offered with a paid Academia.edu Premium subscription) or ResearchGate, note that similar metrics, such as article views, citation counts, profile views, and h-index, can be gathered from other sources recommended by Syracuse University Libraries. For more details, visit this page:
Additionally, ResearchGate uses a proprietary algorithm to generate its RG Score. Since the exact calculation method is unclear, this metric should be used cautiously, if at all.
Academia.edu and ResearchGate encourage researchers to upload their articles. However, most publishers require authors to sign a publication agreement or copyright transfer before publication, outlining what can and cannot be done with the work in the future. Uploading your work – especially a publisher’s pdf – to sites like Academia.edu or ResearchGate may violate these agreements, whereas depositing it in an institutional repository may be permitted or negotiable. Lawsuits alleging copyright infringement include a prominent 2022 ruling against ResearchGate.
If you are considering using Academia.edu or ResearchGate to share your work, it is not recommended. Instead, consider depositing your articles, preprints, postprints, conference posters, proceedings, slide decks, lesson plans, and other materials in SURFACE, Syracuse University's institutional open access repository. Items in SURFACE are indexed by Google and Google Scholar, making them easily searchable, findable, and downloadable by researchers worldwide.
Some researchers join Academia.edu or ResearchGate because their colleagues are active on these platforms or to ensure proper attribution of their work. If you choose to create a profile, proceed cautiously and review the platform's user and privacy agreements. Rather than uploading your work directly, consider depositing your work into SURFACE (or another non-profit, open access repository) and linking to those open access articles in your profile.
Maintaining scholarly profiles can be time-consuming, so it's important to be strategic about which ones you create. Before setting up additional profiles beyond ORCID and Google Scholar, consider whether the benefits are truly compelling. For instance, if your colleagues use a discipline-specific research profile, such as Knowledge Commons, and you find the networking and visibility advantages worthwhile, then investing time in that platform may be a good choice.
There are a number of discipline-specific research profiles to consider, such as:
The following additional research profiles are not discipline specific:
You may also want to consider using social media profiles to increase the visibility of your research: