authors of research articles

Find the top authors in a research field: What you need to know

Joanna Wilkinson

Our blog to help you find top authors is part of our Research Smarter series. This series is dedicated to helping you get familiar with your research field. Download our cheat sheet , which brings together top tips for finding relevant journals, papers, and authors in a field. You can also read the related blog posts for each, here .

Before starting any academic writing effort, it is important to get familiar with the shining stars in your research field. The established, prolific and emerging researchers each contribute to the scholarly conversation. It’s up to you to learn who they are and what they achieved in order to further their ideas.

The Web of Science™ makes it easy to find these leading authors, and confidently assess their output and associated citation impact thanks to the built-in citation network. This blog will help you uncover:

• Specific researchers and their papers
• The most prolific authors in your field
• Authors of Hot and Highly Cited Papers
• An author’s impact as a researcher, editor and reviewer

Find specific researchers and their paper

  You will likely have a few researchers in mind when beginning your author search. The Web of Science’s Author Search helps you easily find researchers and their publications in the Web of Science Core Collection™ – regardless of how common or complex their name, or how their name may be presented in different publications over time.

Start your search by entering the full name of the researcher you’re looking for or enter their ResearcherID or ORCiD. These are persistent author identifiers that help to distinguish researchers from their peers, and to ensure a researcher’s work is correctly attributed to them.

You will then be taken to the researcher’s Author Record. This is an initial snapshot of the author’s publications, citation impact and citing articles in the Core Collection, which is based on the intersection of a machine learning algorithm and human curation via Publons™ and ORCID .

Author Records enable you to discover a researcher’s published work and assess their output and associated impact. If you want to dig even deeper, simply click the “View as a set of results to export, analyze, and link to full text” button at the top of the page. You will be directed to a new results page where you can filter and refine the author’s publications, as well as make use of the Analyze Results tool, all of which we discuss below.

You can learn more about Author Search via our Quick Reference Guide or try it out now.

Find the most prolific authors in your field

The Analyze Results tool in the Web of Science helps you discover who the established authors are in your field. They also help you dig deeper into any known and specific author. You can discover the top authors for any keyword search, their organizational affiliation and even the funding agencies they’re most commonly associated with. This tool also reveals the top co-authors for any researchers or group authors for any topic. You can also analyze your results by timespan, which delivers insight into an author’s full body of work.

Access Analyze Results from the results page of any Web of Science keyword search or via an Author Record as described in the section above. Learn more about the tool’s capabilities   or by watching the video below.

Want to gain access to the Web of Science for your organization? Contact our sales team .

Discover top authors of Hot and Highly Cited Papers in your field

Citation counts are a traditional and key measure of scholarly impact. While no metric is perfect in understanding the influence of a researcher as a whole, citations can help. Citations enable you to gauge the research community’s interest in a given paper. They also help signal the impact this work has within a particular discipline or across fields. This impact can either be recent and highlighted as a Hot Paper, or more sustained as a Highly Cited Paper™.

To view the authors of both Highly Cited and Hot Papers, simply:

• Start a Topic Search
• Refine your results by Hot or Highly Cited Papers (located on the left-hand side)
• Analyze results by author ( Find out more about this here).

Uncover an author’s impact as a researcher, editor and reviewer

We mentioned earlier that no metric is perfect in measuring the impact of an author’s complete body of work. Each metric has a purpose and the key is knowing what each metric can measure and what it cannot. Rather than limiting your author search to papers and citations, you can see a more complete picture of an author’s contribution to their field on Publons . Publons is a free platform for researchers to track their publications, citations, peer review metrics and journal editing work. You can view a summary of all researchers’ work on their public profile. This includes their engagement in open and transparent peer review.

Publons profiles also list certain accolades that will help you understand a researcher’s influence at a glance. One is the Highly Cited Researcher™ recognition , presented annually by Clarivate to recognize the world’s most influential researchers. This is demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science. Furthermore, you’ll also see the global Peer Review Awards listed on various profiles. This award recognizes the quantity and quality of researchers’ peer review efforts in their field over the last 12 months.

Browse researchers on Publons today or learn more about creating your own Publons profile in the video below.

Stay connected

Interested in discovering more tips to really understand your research field? You can download our cheat sheet , which brings together top tips for finding relevant journals, papers and authors in your field. You can also read the related blog posts in our Research Smarter series, here.

If you don’t have access to the Web of Science and want to enquire on behalf of your organization, please contact our sales team .

Related posts

Demonstrating socioeconomic impact – a historical perspective of ancient wisdom and modern challenges.

Unlocking U.K. research excellence: Key insights from the Research Professional News Live summit

For better insights, assess research performance at the department level

Navigation group

Home banner.

Where scientists empower society

Creating solutions for healthy lives on a healthy planet.

most-cited publisher

largest publisher

2.5 billion

article views and downloads

Main Content

• Editors and reviewers
• Collaborators

Find a journal

We have a home for your research. Our community led journals cover more than 1,500 academic disciplines and are some of the largest and most cited in their fields.

Submit your research

Start your submission and get more impact for your research by publishing with us.

Author guidelines

Ready to publish? Check our author guidelines for everything you need to know about submitting, from choosing a journal and section to preparing your manuscript.

Peer review

Our efficient collaborative peer review means you’ll get a decision on your manuscript in an average of 61 days.

Article publishing charges (APCs) apply to articles that are accepted for publication by our external and independent editorial boards

Press office

Visit our press office for key media contact information, as well as Frontiers’ media kit, including our embargo policy, logos, key facts, leadership bios, and imagery.

Institutional partnerships

Join more than 555 institutions around the world already benefiting from an institutional membership with Frontiers, including CERN, Max Planck Society, and the University of Oxford.

Publishing partnerships

Partner with Frontiers and make your society’s transition to open access a reality with our custom-built platform and publishing expertise.

Policy Labs

Connecting experts from business, science, and policy to strengthen the dialogue between scientific research and informed policymaking.

How we publish

All Frontiers journals are community-run and fully open access, so every research article we publish is immediately and permanently free to read.

Editor guidelines

Reviewing a manuscript? See our guidelines for everything you need to know about our peer review process.

Become an editor

Apply to join an editorial board and collaborate with an international team of carefully selected independent researchers.

My assignments

It’s easy to find and track your editorial assignments with our platform, 'My Frontiers' – saving you time to spend on your own research.

Scientists call for urgent action to prevent immune-mediated illnesses caused by climate change and biodiversity loss

Climate change, pollution, and collapsing biodiversity are damaging our immune systems, but improving the environment offers effective and fast-acting protection.

Safeguarding peer review to ensure quality at scale

Making scientific research open has never been more important. But for research to be trusted, it must be of the highest quality. Facing an industry-wide rise in fraudulent science, Frontiers has increased its focus on safeguarding quality.

Chronic stress and inflammation linked to societal and environmental impacts in new study 

Scientists hypothesize that as-yet unrecognized inflammatory stress is spreading among people at unprecedented rates, affecting our cognitive ability to address climate change, war, and other critical issues.

Tiny crustaceans discovered preying on live jellyfish during harsh Arctic night

Scientists used DNA metabarcoding to show for the first time that jellyfish are an important food for amphipods during the Arctic polar night in waters off Svalbard, at a time of year when other food resources are scarce.

Why studying astronauts’ microbiomes is crucial to ensure deep space mission success

In a new Frontiers’ guest editorial, Prof Dr Lembit Sihver, director of CRREAT at the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and his co-authors explore the impact the microbiome has on human health in space.

Cake and cookies may increase Alzheimer’s risk: Here are five Frontiers articles you won’t want to miss

At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, it’s impossible to cover all of them. Here are just five amazing papers you may have missed.

2024's top 10 tech-driven Research Topics

Frontiers has compiled a list of 10 Research Topics that embrace the potential of technology to advance scientific breakthroughs and change the world for the better.

Get the latest research updates, subscribe to our newsletter

• Search by keyword
• Search by citation

Page 1 of 42

‘Enough is enough’: a mixed methods study on the key factors driving UK NHS nurses’ decision to strike

The UK National Health Service (NHS) is one of the largest employers in the world and employs around 360,000 registered nurses. Following a protracted pay dispute in December 2022 NHS nurses engaged in industr...

• View Full Text

R425 first year student nurses ‘experience of encounters with death of a patient during clinical placement

In the course of caring, nurses often experience the death of patients, and this experience has an effect on the nurse. Every nurse responds to this experience in a different way, and it can be either a negati...

The mediating role of learning motivation in the relationship among perceived stress and emotional regulation among Saudi nursing students in clinical practice

Nursing students often face high levels of stress due to demanding responsibilities during clinical placement. Emotional regulation, the ability to manage and regulate one’s emotions effectively, is crucial fo...

A qualitative study of the experiences of interdisciplinary nurses during the COVID-19 outbreak following the announcement of the “Ten new guidelines” in China

On December 7, 2022, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of China’s State Council released the “Ten New Guidelines” to optimize the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevention policies further. This ...

Relationship between resilience and self-efficacy among Iranian nurses: a cross-sectional study during the post-Corona era

Resilience and self-efficacy play an influential role in nurses’ clinical performance, which are considered resources for improving adaptability and promoting work engagement. This study aimed to determine the...

Perceived HRM and turnover intentions of elderly care workers: perspective from person-job fit and institutional ownership

Although the phenomenon of high turnover rate in the elderly care industry has existed for a long time, there are few studies that have constructed frameworks to comprehensively analyze the strength of the eff...

Surgical counting interruptions in operating rooms

Operating rooms are complex working environments with high workloads and high levels of cognitive demand. The first surgical count which occurs during the chaotic preoperative stage and is considered a critica...

Cultural adaptation and validation of the caring behaviors assessment tool into Spanish

The aim of the research was to translate, culturally adapt and validate the Caring Behaviors Assessment (CBA) tool in Spain, ensuring its appropriateness in the Spanish cultural context.

Alerta Cannabis: A Tailored-Computer Web-Based Program for the Prevention of Cannabis Use in Adolescents: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial Protocol

The growing use of cannabis in adolescence is a public health problem that must be addressed through prevention. In Spain, the average age of initiation of cannabis use in the adolescent population is 14.8 yea...

The mediating role of cardiac patients’ perception of nursing care on the relationship between kinesiophobia, anxiety and depression in rural hospitals: a cross-sectional study

Kinesiophobia could act as a significant barrier against physical activity following cardiac procedures worsening cardiovascular health problems and potentially leading to conditions like hospital-acquired anx...

Nurses’ perspectives on professional self-concept and its influencing factors: A qualitative study

Nurses with a strong professional self-concept tend to exhibit a positive mindset and strong work engagement, delivering high-quality patient care. Although numerous quantitative studies have examined the fact...

Investigating perceptions and attitude toward telenursing among undergraduate nursing students for the future of nursing education: a cross-sectional study

Telenursing is poised to emerge as a novel healthcare delivery system in the digital age. Hence, understanding nursing students' perspectives and readiness is pivotal for its effective implementation. This stu...

Patient satisfaction with preoperative nursing care and its associated factors in surgical procedures, 2023: a cross-sectional study

To enhance patient satisfaction, nurses engaged in preoperative care must possess a comprehensive understanding of the most up-to-date evidence. However, there is a notable dearth of relevant information regar...

Parental satisfaction with neonatal intensive care unit services and associated factors in Ethiopia: systematic review and meta-analysis

In the context of healthcare, satisfaction is the attainment of adequate or acceptable treatment and serves as both a benchmark for quality and the ultimate objective of providing care. In neonatal care facili...

Missed nursing care in surgical care– a hazard to patient safety: a quantitative study within the inCHARGE programme

Missed nursing care occurs globally, and the consequences are severe for the patients when fundamental care needs are not fulfilled, nor delivered in a person-centred way. This study aimed to investigate the o...

Experiences of receiving an mHealth application with proactive nursing support among community-dwelling older adults: a mixed-methods study

As the population ages, a plethora of digital and mobile health applications for assistance with independent living have emerged. Still unknown, however, is how older adults sustain the use of these applications.

The impact of perceived organizational justice on young nurses’ job performance: a chain mediating role of organizational climate and job embeddedness

The level of nurses’ job performance has always been of great concern, which not only represents the level of nursing service quality but is also closely related to patients’ treatment and prognosis. The aim o...

Efficacy of a virtual nursing simulation-based education to provide psychological support for patients affected by infectious disease disasters: a randomized controlled trial

Virtual simulation-based education for healthcare professionals has emerged as a strategy for dealing with infectious disease disasters, particularly when training at clinical sites is restricted due to the ri...

The environmental awareness of nurses as environmentally sustainable health care leaders: a mixed method analysis

People worldwide are concerned with the possibility of climate change, microplastics, air pollution, and extreme weather affecting human health. Countries are implementing measures to reduce environmental impa...

Factors associated with foreign-educated nurses’ willingness to continue working in Japan: a qualitative study

Japan has been accepting foreign nurse candidates since 2008 under Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). As globalisation progresses, nurses from diverse backgrounds are expected to play an active role in th...

“To do or not to do”, male nurses’ experiences of providing intimate care to female patients in China, a constructivist grounded theory study

Some studies suggest that female patients have more concerns about receiving intimate care from male than female nurses. Thus, providing intimate care to female patients is a challenging experience for male nu...

Professional values education for undergraduate nursing students: developing a framework based on the professional values growth theory

Education has been recognised as necessary in forming and internalising professional values. The system and instructors' content in existing educational institutions focus on developing students' knowledge, sk...

Effect of evidence-based nursing practices training programme on the competency of nurses caring for mechanically ventilated patients: a randomised controlled trial

Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) has been recognised worldwide as a standardised approach for enhancing the quality of healthcare and patient outcomes. Nurses play a significant role in integrating EBP, especiall...

Relationship between depression and burnout among nurses in Intensive Care units at the late stage of COVID-19: a network analysis

Mental health problems are critical and common in medical staff working in Intensive Care Units (ICU) even at the late stage of COVID-19, particularly for nurses. There is little research to explore the inner ...

Exploring the psychological experience of novice nurses in stomatological hospitals in China: a phenomenological study

At the onset of their professional journey, novice nurses often undergo a multifaceted psychological experience as they transition from theoretical knowledge to clinical practice, potentially impacting their d...

How does strength use relate to burnout among Chinese healthcare professionals? Exploring the mediating roles of beliefs about stress and basic psychological needs satisfaction

The prevalence of burnout among healthcare workers remains chronically high. Former studies have indicated that strength use is a promising approach to reduce burnout. However, relatively little is known about...

Insomnia and anxiety among COVID-19 patients in China: the chain mediating effect of psychological capital and self-esteem

The outbreak of Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) in 2019 has continued until now, posing a huge threat to the public’s physical and mental health, resulting in different degrees of mental health problems. As a ...

Cognitive flexibility's role in shaping self-perception of aging, body appreciation, and self-efficacy among community-dwelling older women

Cognitive flexibility, the capacity to adjust to new information, affects how aging is perceived. In Egyptian culture, older women’s views on aging are shaped by societal gender roles and expectations. These v...

Competency scale of quality and safety for greenhand nurses: instrument development and psychometric test

Guaranteeing nursing service safety and quality is a prioritized issue in the healthcare setting worldwide. However, there still lacks a valid scale to measure the quality and safety competencies of newly grad...

Status and content of outpatient preoperative education for rectal cancer patients undergoing stoma surgery provided by Japanese wound, ostomy, and continence nurses: a cross-sectional study

Preoperative education can improve postoperative quality of life in patients undergoing stoma surgery. However, the prevalence and when, where, and how preoperative education is implemented are unclear. Theref...

Effects of nurses-led multidisciplinary-based psychological management in spinal surgery: a retrospective, propensity-score-matching comparative study

Patients in spine surgery often have emotional disorders which is caused by multi-factors. Therefore, a multidisciplinary and multimodal intervention program is required to improve emotional disorders during t...

Nurses’ perceptions of how their professional autonomy influences the moral dimension of end-of-life care to nursing home residents– a qualitative study

Over the years, caring has been explained in various ways, thus presenting various meanings to different people. Caring is central to nursing discipline and care ethics have always had an important place in nu...

Challenges of home care: a qualitative study

Despite countless benefits of home care, unfortunately, the variety and quality of services provided by homecare centers are uncertain. This study was conducted to explore of home care challenges.

A closer look: obsessive-compulsive symptoms among intern nurses amidst COVID-19 pandemic

The distinctive circumstances and socio-cultural context in Egypt make it crucial to explore the psychological well-being of intern nurses amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with a specific focus on obsessive-compuls...

Digital stress perception among German hospital nurses and associations with health-oriented leadership, emotional exhaustion and work-privacy conflict: a cross-sectional study

The use of digital information and communication technologies (ICT) can be accompanied by increased technostress for nursing staff, which in turn can be associated with health consequences. In addition, the us...

Dual mediating effects of anxiety to use and acceptance attitude of artificial intelligence technology on the relationship between nursing students’ perception of and intention to use them: a descriptive study

Artificial intelligence (AI)-based healthcare technologies are changing nurses’ roles and enhancing patient care. However, nursing students may not be aware of the benefits, may not be trained to use AI-based ...

Health characteristics and factors associated with transition shock in newly graduated registered nurses: a latent class analysis

Transition shock occurs at a vulnerable time in newly graduated registered nurses’ careers and has a clear impact on both newly graduated registered nurses’ productivity and patient recovery outcomes. Identify...

Nursing students’ attitudes toward intimate partner violence and its relationship with self-esteem and self-efficacy

Understanding nursing students’ attitudes toward Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is pivotal because it may impact the care and support, they provide victims. This study aimed to explore nursing students’ attit...

A multi-country mixed-method study identifying the association between perceived ethical work climate and problems among critical care nurses

Given the grave ethical tension and dilemmas posed continuously which are aggravated in the intensive care unit context and its related caregiving provision, combined with their impact on critical care nurses’...

Radiation safety compliance awareness among healthcare workers exposed to ionizing radiation

In recent years, there has been a marked growth in the use of ionizing radiation in medical imaging for both diagnosis and therapy, which in turn has led to increased radiation exposure among healthcare workers.

Exploring nurses’ experiences of providing spiritual care to cancer patients: a qualitative study

This study aims to explore nurses’ experiences of delivering spiritual care in an oncology setting.

Development and effects of advanced cardiac resuscitation nursing education program using web-based serious game: application of the IPO model

The significant rise in cardiac arrest cases within hospitals, coupled with a low survival rate, poses a critical health issue. And in most situations, nurses are the first responders. To develop nursing stude...

Nurses’ perceptions, experience and knowledge regarding artificial intelligence: results from a cross-sectional online survey in Germany

Nursing faces increasing pressure due to changing demographics and a shortage of skilled workers. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers an opportunity to relieve nurses and reduce pressure. The perception of AI ...

Determination of nurses’ happiness, hope, future expectations, and the factors influencing them: a descriptive study that can guide policy development to prevent nurse migration*

The happiness and hopefulness of nurses are not only known that contribute to their emotional well-being but also professional creativity, improve the quality of nursing services and organizational performance...

Evaluation of a new concept to improve and organize clinical practice in nursing education: a pilot-study

Nursing students may experience clinical practice as unsafe due to the interactions with patients, fear of making mistakes, lack of clinical experience and supervision, which results in anxiety and stress. Thu...

Variability of clinical practice in the care of the second stage of labor among midwives in Spain

There are recommendations based on scientific evidence on care in the second stage of labor, but it is not known to what degree the professionals comply with these recommendations.

Study protocol for the development, trial, and evaluation of a strategy for the implementation of qualification-oriented work organization in nursing homes

Staffing ratios in nursing homes vary among the federal states of Germany, but there are no rational grounds for these variations. In a previous study, a new instrument for the standardized calculation of staf...

Outcomes of professional misconduct by nurses: a qualitative study

Professional misconduct by nurses is a critical challenge in providing safe quality care, which can lead to devastating and extensive outcomes. Explaining the experiences of clinical nurses and nursing manager...

Face-to-face versus 360° VR video: a comparative study of two teaching methods in nursing education

The practical sessions during skills laboratory simulation or clinical simulation are cores of nursing education. For this, different modalities have been devised to facilitate psychomotor skills learning. One...

Evaluating person-centered care in neurological outpatient care: a mixed-methods content validity study

Person-centered care (PCC) is gaining increased attention. PCC concerns the whole person behind the disease and can improve care for people with long-term conditions such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkins...

Important information

Editorial board

For authors

For editorial board members

For reviewers

• Manuscript editing services

Annual Journal Metrics

2022 Citation Impact 3.2 - 2-year Impact Factor 3.6 - 5-year Impact Factor 1.428 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper) 0.769 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

2023 Speed 26 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median) 161 days submission to accept (Median)

2023 Usage  3,633,213 downloads 785 Altmetric mentions 

• More about our metrics

Peer-review Terminology

The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal:

Identity transparency: Single anonymized

Reviewer interacts with: Editor

Review information published: Review reports. Reviewer Identities reviewer opt in. Author/reviewer communication

More information is available here

• Follow us on Twitter

BMC Nursing

ISSN: 1472-6955

• General enquiries: [email protected]

• Affiliate Program

• UNITED STATES
• 台灣 (TAIWAN)
• TÜRKIYE (TURKEY)
• Academic Editing Services
• - Research Paper
• - Journal Manuscript
• - Dissertation
• - College & University Assignments
• Admissions Editing Services
• - Application Essay
• - Personal Statement
• - Recommendation Letter
• - Cover Letter
• - CV/Resume
• Business Editing Services
• - Business Documents
• - Report & Brochure
• - Website & Blog
• Writer Editing Services
• - Script & Screenplay
• Our Editors
• Client Reviews
• Editing & Proofreading Prices
• Wordvice Points
• Partner Discount
• Plagiarism Checker
• APA Citation Generator
• MLA Citation Generator
• Chicago Citation Generator
• Vancouver Citation Generator
• - APA Style
• - MLA Style
• - Chicago Style
• - Vancouver Style
• Writing & Editing Guide
• Academic Resources
• Admissions Resources

How to Order Authors in Scientific Papers

It’s rare that an article is authored by only one or two people anymore. In fact, the average original research paper has five authors these days. The growing list of collaborative research projects raises important questions regarding the author order for research manuscripts and the impact an author list has on readers’ perceptions.

With a handful of authors, a group might be inclined to create an author name list based on the amount of work contributed. What happens, though, when you have a long list of authors? It would be impractical to rank the authors by their relative contributions. Additionally, what if the authors contribute relatively equal amounts of work? Similarly, if a study was interdisciplinary (and many are these days), how can one individual’s contribution be deemed more significant than another’s?

Why does author order matter?

Although an author list should only reflect those who have made substantial contributions to a research project and its draft manuscript (see, for example, the authorship guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ), we’d be remiss to say that author order doesn’t matter. In theory, everyone on the list should be credited equally since it takes a team to successfully complete a project; however, due to industry customs and other practical limitations, some authors will always be more visible than others.

The following are some notable implications regarding author order.

• The “first author” is a coveted position because of its increased visibility. This author is the first name readers will see, and because of various citation rules, publications are usually referred to by the name of the first author only. In-text or bibliographic referencing rules, for example, often reduce all other named authors to “et al.” Since employers use first-authorship to evaluate academic personnel for employment, promotion, and tenure, and since graduate students often need a number of first-author publications to earn their degree, being the lead author on a manuscript is crucial for many researchers, especially early in their career.
• The last author position is traditionally reserved for the supervisor or principal investigator. As such, this person receives much of the credit when the research goes well and the flak when things go wrong. The last author may also be the corresponding author, the person who is the primary contact for journal editors (the first author could, however, fill this role as well, especially if they contributed most to the work).
• Given that there is no uniform rule about author order, readers may find it difficult to assess the nature of an author’s contribution to a research project. To address this issue, some journals, particularly medical ones, nowadays insist on detailed author contribution notes (make sure you check the target journal guidelines before submission to find out how the journal you are planning to submit to handles this). Nevertheless, even this does little to counter how strongly citation rules have enhanced the attention first-named authors receive.

Common Methods for Listing Authors

The following are some common methods for establishing author order lists.

• Relative contribution. As mentioned above, the most common way authors are listed is by relative contribution. The author who made the most substantial contribution to the work described in an article and did most of the underlying research should be listed as the first author. The others are ranked in descending order of contribution. However, in many disciplines, such as the life sciences, the last author in a group is the principal investigator or “senior author”—the person who often provides ideas based on their earlier research and supervised the current work.
• Alphabetical list . Certain fields, particularly those involving large group projects, employ other methods . For example, high-energy particle physics teams list authors alphabetically.
• Multiple “first” authors . Additional “first” authors (so-called “co-first authors”) can be noted by an asterisk or other symbols accompanied by an explanatory note. This practice is common in interdisciplinary studies; however, as we explained above, the first name listed on a paper will still enjoy more visibility than any other “first” author.
• Multiple “last” authors . Similar to recognizing several first authors, multiple last authors can be recognized via typographical symbols and footnotes. This practice arose as some journals wanted to increase accountability by requiring senior lab members to review all data and interpretations produced in their labs instead of being awarded automatic last-authorship on every publication by someone in their group.
• Negotiated order . If you were thinking you could avoid politics by drowning yourself in research, you’re sorely mistaken. While there are relatively clear guidelines and practices for designating first and last authors, there’s no overriding convention for the middle authors. The list can be decided by negotiation, so sharpen those persuasive argument skills!

As you can see, choosing the right author order can be quite complicated. Therefore, we urge researchers to consider these factors early in the research process and to confirm this order during the English proofreading process, whether you self-edit or received manuscript editing or paper editing services , all of which should be done before submission to a journal. Don’t wait until the manuscript is drafted before you decide on the author order in your paper. All the parties involved will need to agree on the author list before submission, and no one will want to delay submission because of a disagreement about who should be included on the author list, and in what order (along with other journal manuscript authorship issues).

On top of that, journals sometimes have clear rules about changing authors or even authorship order during the review process, might not encourage it, and might require detailed statements explaining the specific contribution of every new/old author, official statements of agreement of all authors, and/or a corrigendum to be submitted, all of which can further delay the publication process. We recommend periodically revisiting the named author issue during the drafting stage to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that the list is updated to appropriately reflect changes in team composition or contributions to a research project.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• J Korean Med Sci
• v.32(11); 2017 Nov

Researcher and Author Profiles: Opportunities, Advantages, and Limitations

Armen yuri gasparyan.

1 Departments of Rheumatology and Research and Development, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust (Teaching Trust of the University of Birmingham, UK), Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley, West Midlands, UK.

Bekaidar Nurmashev

2 South Kazakhstan State Pharmaceutical Academy, Shymkent, Kazakhstan.

Marlen Yessirkepov

3 Department of Biochemistry, Biology and Microbiology, South Kazakhstan State Pharmaceutical Academy, Shymkent, Kazakhstan.

Dmitry A. Endovitskiy

4 Voronezh State University, Voronezh, Russian Federation.

Alexander A. Voronov

5 Department of Marketing and Trade Deals, Kuban State University, Krasnodar, Russian Federation.

George D. Kitas

6 Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.

Currently available online profiling platforms offer various services for researchers and authors. Opening an individual account and filling it with scholarly contents increase visibility of research output and boost its impact. This article overviews some of the widely used and emerging profiling platforms, highlighting their tools for sharing scholarly items, crediting individuals, and facilitating networking. Global bibliographic databases and search platforms, such as Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar, are widely used for profiling authors with indexed publications. Scholarly networking websites, such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, provide indispensable services for researchers poorly visible elsewhere on the Internet. Several specialized platforms are designed to offer profiling along with their main functionalities, such as reference management and archiving. The Open Researcher and Contributor Identification (ORCID) project has offered a solution to the author name disambiguation. It has been integrated with numerous bibliographic databases, platforms, and manuscript submission systems to help research managers and journal editors select and credit the best reviewers, and other scholarly contributors. Individuals with verifiable reviewer and editorial accomplishments are also covered by Publons, which is an increasingly recognized service for publicizing and awarding reviewer comments. Currently available profiling formats have numerous advantages and some limitations. The advantages are related to their openness and chances of boosting the researcher impact. Some of the profiling websites are complementary to each other. The underutilization of various profiling websites and their inappropriate uses for promotion of ‘predatory’ journals are among reported limitations. A combined approach to the profiling systems is advocated in this article.

INTRODUCTION

Comprehensive evaluation of research performance is an increasingly important task for the research and publishing enterprise in the era of digitization, open access, and diversification of social networking ( 1 ). A wide variety of individual and institutional websites is now available to keep the global scientific community abreast of ongoing research projects, published articles, conferences, and opportunities for collaboration. The digitization of the individual curriculum vitae has advanced the archiving of scholarly articles, books, presentations, and audio and video materials in specifically designed websites, which were not available even a decade ago ( 2 ). The accuracy, transparency, and completeness of information on such platforms mark the professionalism and scientific prestige of the creators and moderators.

Online profiles are increasingly employed for evaluating prospective academic mentors, authors, reviewers and journal editors, for sharing and commenting on scholarly articles, and establishing scholarly networks. For the global scientific community, one of the most important components of such profiles is the article in English ( 3 , 4 ). Subsequently, simultaneous searches through the global databases and platforms, such as MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, increase chances of retrieving relevant items and navigating through the authors' profiles for their comprehensive evaluation ( 5 ). The journal editors often refer to profiles of their contributors in their editorial management systems, linked to bibliographic databases and search platforms, for improving their quality checks and promoting the best contributors. Publishers and editors are strongly encouraged to evaluate academic profiles and online identifiers of their contributors to avoid ‘fake’ reviewer commenting and other forms misconduct ( 6 ). Several search platforms, scholarly networking websites, and bibliographic databases have adjusted their online tools to offer regularly updated information on researchers and authors for advanced profiling and aggregating scholarly information.

This article provides an overview of some of the established and emerging profiling platforms ( Table 1 ).

ORCID = Open Researcher and Contributor Identification, RePEc = Research Paper in Economics.

PROFILING PLATFORMS

Scopus author identifiers.

Scopus author identifiers are unique digital links to research performance of individual scholars in any academic discipline. Such identifiers are automatically generated when the authors get at least one Scopus-indexed item, allowing them to track and analyse their citation data, and particularly the h-index values, display professional keywords, affiliations, and links to their co-authors' profiles. Advanced tools are now available to navigate through authors' list of publications, analyse their annual publication activity, highly-cited items, target journals, names of co-authors, article types, and subject areas. Scopus profiles may also include the Open Researcher and Contributor Identification (ORCID), which are now searchable through a separate browsing window at the Scopus interface. Such information is available for free previews and can be processed for ranking authors in certain fields and evaluating their impact over time ( 7 ).

The recent integration of PlumX Metrics with Scopus has added a new direction to the online profiling by aggregating information on article-level metrics, such as usage (downloads, HTML views), captures (bookmarks), mentions (blog posts, e-comments, Wikipedia references), social media attention, and citation counts beyond Scopus ( 8 ). Comparisons with other altmetrics tools, such as ImpactStory, proved that PlumX has the most comprehensive coverage of social resonance of scholarly information ( 9 ). Subscribing institutions can now open individual accounts on the PlumX dashboard to comprehensively track their researchers' impact ( 10 ).

Although Scopus author identifiers are linked to records of the largest abstract and citation database, limited timeline of the contents coverage (mostly back to 1996) may distort profiles of scholars with longer academic career and higher citations of their initial works, which are not yet covered by this database. Scopus profiles may also contain technical mistakes due to the automatic processing of data and generating more than one identifier for the same author. Such a limitation can be overcome by regularly monitoring updates and merging two or more profiles at the request of the users.

ResearcherID

In contrast to Scopus, Web of Science does not automatically generate author identifiers, which is viewed by some as a limitation in terms of comprehensive evaluation of an individual's publication activity and related metrics ( 11 ). In 2008, Thomson Reuters launched ResearcherID as a multidisciplinary service, which was integrated with the Web of Science platform. The website was specifically designed to disambiguate authors by creating unique profiling web pages and showcasing individual scholars' publications and citations from Web of Science.

The authors with access to Web of Science can create the ResearcherID profile, present and regularly update their biographic notes and indexed articles, track citations and h-index values, provide links to their ORCID IDs, and find collaborators. Although this profiling system does not provide comprehensive coverage of all authors with Web of Science-indexed items, it is often employed for distinguishing the most prolific and influential researchers globally ( 12 ).

Despite the fact that there are more than 270,000 registered IDs on Web of Science ( 13 ), their distribution is disproportionate across academic disciplines and countries, and quantitative comparisons with other profiling systems are not in favor of ResearcherID. In fact, an analysis of 4,307 Norwegian researchers' profiles revealed that ResearcherID was the least popular platform, with only 130 ID holders (3%) ( 14 ). The same study reported that there were 1,307 scholars with ResearchGate (30%) and 333 with Google Scholar (8%) profiles.

In contrast to the Scopus identification system, ResearcherID relies exclusively on the authors' self-identification ( 15 ), which may create inaccuracies and errors in their publication lists by aggregating non-indexed and other authors' Web of Science-indexed items. Finally, concerns have been raised that the ResearcherID platform, which was initially designed for individuals, is now abused and filled with numerous ‘predatory’ journal profiles. Such profiles are created to mislead the readership and claim that these journals are visible on Web of Science ( 16 ).

PubMed does not issue unique author identifiers, but biomedical and allied specialists often rely on this free and rapidly updated platform for literature searches and evaluations of individual profiles linked to MEDLINE-indexed and PubMed Central-archived articles ( 17 ). It is rightly credited as the primary research tool for biomedical specialists ( 18 ).

The accuracy of profiling on PubMed depends on the use of correct author names and their affiliations. Manual corrections of the retrieved records are sometimes required ( 19 ).

The main advantage of the PubMed/MEDLINE profile is its integration with the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) specialist keywords vocabulary and scientific prestige of the indexed items ( 17 ).

Importantly, a web server called Peer2ref is designed to pick expert reviewers and editors by evaluating profiles of authors with MEDLINE-indexed articles ( 20 ). More than 3,800 MEDLINE-indexed journals in the last ten years are searched through for the profiling. The programme automatically evaluates and disambiguates profiles by analysing authors' bibliographies, co-authors, and keywords in their MEDLINE abstracts.

An important recent development for name disambiguation in PubMed was its integration with ORCID, enabling the transfer of bibliographic records from PubMed Central to ORCID IDs ( 21 ).

Researchers who apply for or receive grants from the US National Institutes of Health can now create their Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae (SciENcv) profile, which is a service of The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) ( 22 ). This service is available to all researchers who hold personal accounts at NCBI. The SciENcv service is also compliant with ORCID ( 23 ). It allows them to showcase their research and academic accomplishments, previous grants, awards, and bibliographies.

Google Scholar Citations

Google Scholar Citations was launched in 2012 as a free online platform, and was viewed by some as an alternative to other global citation-tracking services ( 24 ). It now functions as a basic tool for promoting authors from any scholarly discipline with at least one published item in an indexed journal, book, conference proceedings, and non-reviewed sources, which are tracked by Google. The authors with a few or no indexed articles, poorly visible on Scopus and Web of Science, and particularly those from the Social Sciences and Humanities, can benefit from managing their Google Scholar Citations profile. Such a profile is also useful for promoting early career researchers and preserving information about eminent and deceased scholars.

The author profiles can be filled with photographs, links to similar profiles of co-authors, manually added or retrieved from Google articles, books, dissertations, presentations, and any other published items. Citations to these items, which are processed for calculating the individuals' h-index, are also collected from a wide variety of automatically identifiable sources. Evidence from the field of information science suggests that article downloads and captures (bookmarkings) increase Google Scholar Citations ( 25 ).

The lack of filtering poor quality and irrelevant items and the absence of an organized thesaurus for systematizing searches are the main limitations of Google Scholar. The platform is not protected from manipulations and citation boosting by uploading apparently fake citing sources on the Internet ( 26 ). It is also filled with articles from numerous ‘predatory’ journals, polluting science and damaging reputation of Google Scholar as a reliable source for evaluating research performance ( 27 ). At the same time, attempts have been made to introduce validation tools for improving the reliability of the Google Scholar Citations profiles ( 28 ).

ResearchGate

ResearchGate is one of the largest social networking sites for researchers with more than 4.5 million registered users ( 29 ). It was launched in 2008 as a multidisciplinary hub of researchers, a platform for sharing articles and interacting with potential collaborators, and a scholarly discussion forum.

To create the profile page, a researcher should have at least one publication, which is identifiable by the system, or an email account from a recognized institution. Other tools have also been introduced to create verifiable profiles. The ResearchGate profiles incorporate photographs, keywords of professional interests, links to published articles, and other scholarly items. The users can follow publication activity of other registered researchers, send online messages, discuss research issues, and get notifications when their articles are viewed, downloaded, or cited.

The website's functionality is similar to that of other profiling and social networking services, such as Academia.edu, Google Scholar, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, ResearchGate is primarily designed for scholarly communication and data sharing between researchers, authors, and journal editors ( 30 ). It also stands out of numerous networking sites by archiving full-texts of pre-published and published items in line with the copyrights ( 31 ).

A study revealed that ResearchGate and Google Scholar cover almost the same scholarly items. However, early archiving of pre-published articles on ResearchGate increases their visibility and chances of getting cited ( 32 ). There is also evidence suggesting that readers who view articles on ResearchGate tend to cite them in their Scopus-indexed articles ( 33 ).

The platform tracks citations along with alternative metrics to calculate the ResearchGate Score, which is proved a reliable measure of individual research performance comparable to that of Scopus-based metrics ( 34 ).

Along with the advantages, ResearchGate has also limitations due to the lack of validation tools for preventing archiving of non-reviewed and ‘predatory’ items ( 32 , 35 ). Copyright violations are also common due to users' lack of awareness of the publishers' open archiving regulations. An analysis of randomly selected full-texts of 500 articles, which were posted on ResearchGate, demonstrated that only 108 (21.6%) of these items were from open access journals ( 36 ). The same study demonstrated that 201 (51.3%) of 392 non-open-access items were not eligible for posting on ResearchGate, and in most cases it was possible to avoid the copyright violations by repositing pre-published manuscripts instead of published PDF versions of articles. Finally, concerns have also been raised over the abuses of ResearchGate, leading to cyber-bulling and breaches of privacy ( 37 ).

Academia.edu

About 11 million users have accounts on Academia.edu ( 29 ). This website shares some features with ResearchGate ( 38 ). However, Academia.edu is more tailored to the academic needs. It generates personalized lists of recommended references for its users, saving time for related literature searches ( 39 ). Although Academia.edu is a multidisciplinary hub, one study found that linguists and sociologists keen to preferentially use this website for profiling in their field of professional interests ( 40 ). Based on an analysis of a sample of 31,216 articles, it was found that an article posted on Academia.edu attracts 69% more citations after 5 years than a comparable article not available online ( 41 ). Widely known limitations of this website are related to inappropriate use of its domain name (edu) and scarce tools for the quality scholarly communication.

Researchers who wish to interact and cooperate with their colleagues worldwide, and especially those at early stages of their career, should correctly and consistently list their names in all publications. Creating a unique digital identifier is critically important for them and for authors with common, identical, and variably recorded names ( 42 ). Getting an ORCID identifier allows recording variably listed or common names under a unique digital link and overcoming the author name ambiguity.

Launched in 2012, the ORCID initiative is now the main multidisciplinary hub of researchers, authors, reviewers, mentors, and other academic contributors with permanent identifiers ( 43 ). The number of registered ORCID account holders has grown rapidly over the past 5 years and reached 3,742,608 (as of August 21, 2017). Many leading publishing houses, grant funding agencies, and libraries have endorsed this initiative and provided funding for its development ( 44 ).

The ORCID profiles can be filled with manually added or transferred from CrossRef, Scopus, ResearcherID (Web of Science), Europe PubMed Central, KoreaMed, and other online platforms records of published journal articles, book chapters, and dissertations. Unpublished scholarly works can also be presented on the users' profiles to share preliminary research data. Additionally, the account holders can populate their ORCID profiles with links to their presentations, datasets, images, video files on Figshare, and automatically feed their integrated profiles on ScienceOpen for promoting research and attracting post-publication comments ( 45 , 46 , 47 ). Finally, scholars with Publons accounts acquire a peer review section on their ORCID profiles to fill it with exported information about verified reviewer assignments ( 48 ).

The list of keywords and biographical sketches at the ORCID interface can be edited by the account holders to highlight their scope of professional interests and main achievements, which are required for grant applications, academic promotions, and research collaborations. The ORCID platform has also tools to secure privacy of the users.

Despite its advantages in terms of openness, increased visibility for early career researchers and experts from developing countries, improved management of grant applications and journal submissions, there are some limitations of the system. Approximately 20% of the registered ORCID accounts are now inactive ( 49 ). Some of the scholarly works listed on the users' profiles are poorly validated and apparently incorrect ( 44 ). Although enormous efforts have been made to cover a large number of researchers and contributors, roughly only 10% of the world's researchers are currently represented on the ORCID platform, their distribution across countries is not proportional, and not all research funding agencies and academic institutions mandate opening and maintaining ORCID IDs ( 50 ). Concerns have also been raised over the eventual monopolization of the scholarly communication through the digital identifiers ( 49 ).

A more specialized approach to evaluating academic activities is offered by Publons, which is an increasingly reputable platform for peer reviewers. It was recently acquired by Clarivate Analytics, recognizing this platform as an essential tool for evaluating research performance ( 51 ). Publons also partners with the ScholarOne editorial management system to aid editors in evaluating potential reviewers ( 52 ).

This initiative was launched in 2013 to freely register and credit reviewer and editorial contributions, and rapidly became the only online platform for crediting reviewers and allowing them to claim publication activity by getting digital identifiers from CrossRef for the best reviewer comments ( 53 ).

Unique Publons identifiers are issued to all registered users, who may fill their profiles with photographs and biographic notes, list journals assigning them reviewer and editorial duties, integrate with their ORCID IDs and other academic profiles, and transfer their reviewer comments for open access with the publishers' permission ( 54 ). Publons supports all models of peer review, ranging from double-blind to post-publication review, and is compliant with their users' privacy requirements in terms of listing any reviewer and editorial assignments ( 55 ).

A recent study comparing research performance on Google Scholar and Publons demonstrated that the latter serves a unique purpose, allowing journal editors to pick the best reviewers for future services regardless of their author activities tracked by Google ( 56 ).

Publishers endorsing the initiative and allowing their reviewers to record related information on Publons increase not only the reviewers' but also their own visibility. This is why some non-Anglophone publishers have also joined the initiative and encouraged their contributors to showcase their reviewer and editorial accomplishments on Publons ( 57 ).

DIFFERENCES IN THE USE OF SCHOLARLY PROFILES

For comprehensive evaluation of any individual research profile, no single bibliographic database or scholarly networking platform is currently sufficient. In fact, empiric analyses of information scientists' profiles on Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, specialist databases, and social networking websites revealed that each of these services covered less than 50% of the authors' publication activity ( 58 ).

An analysis of 6,132 profiles on Google Scholar, Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and Mendeley demonstrated that specialists in the Social Sciences and Humanities mostly rely on Academia.edu while biologists prefer ResearchGate for scholarly networking ( 59 ). A survey of 296 faculty members of one of the major New York research and academic institutions pointed to a surprisingly low awareness of the author identifiers among them (n = 95, 32%), with physicists, biologists, and health scientists being relatively better informed than other specialists and mathematicians, who were least informed ( 60 ). The surveyed faculty members mostly used ORCID IDs (n = 49, 15%), followed by Scopus author ID (n = 29, 9%), ResearcherID (n = 25, 7%), and arXiv ID (n = 20, 6%).

The use of online profiles differs substantially across countries. Scholars from Brazil and India are well represented on ResearchGate while their Chinese, Russian, and Korean colleagues rarely use this platform for showcasing their publication activity and interacting with potential collaborators ( 37 , 61 ).

Functionalities and content coverage of scholarly networking and profiling websites also differ substantially. ResearchGate predominantly archives recent articles of the profile holders while historic papers remain poorly visible on this platform, and particularly in the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities ( 62 ). A recent analysis of search, navigation, analytics, privacy, filtering, and other features of ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, and Zotero proved that none of these services has advanced operational functions ( 63 ). The same study scored ‘above average’ and ranked first ResearchGate based on an analysis of its information retrieval and management functions.

PERSPECTIVES OF PROFILING INDIVIDUAL SCHOLARS

Online researcher and author profile is a recognized tool for self-promotion, scholarly networking, sharing publications, and making an impact ( 64 , 65 ). Global visibility of research output and availability of complementary platforms for aggregating massive volumes of scholarly items and tracking citations and alternative metrics add to the research management and ranking of scholars. Advanced searches through ResearchGate and Academia.edu are increasingly employed for systematic analyses of literature, and particularly in non-mainstream science countries ( 66 , 67 , 68 ).

Authors are now able to monitor daily interest of the global scientific community toward publications posted on their Google Scholar and ResearchGate profiles ( 69 ). Many other networking platforms are upgraded to accommodate digital profiles (resumes) for academic, research, or business purposes ( 70 ). All these developments suggest that profiling is there to stay.

Additionally, there are some national platforms, which are prioritized for profiling scholars in non-Anglophone countries (e.g., the Index Copernicus Scientists panel, the Science Index platform of the Russian Science Citation Index database). Although these websites promote publications of the account holders locally, their coverage and global visibility are still limited due to the language barrier and skewed impact metrics. The latter is a particularly big issue for the Index Copernicus database, which has been criticized for indexing numerous ‘predatory’ journals and issuing questionable metrics ( 71 ).

New dimensions for profiling emerge to increase visibility and scholarly reputation of researchers at any stage of their career. The ScienceOpen platform with its unique model of profiling, open-access publishing, and post-publication commenting is a good example of the close relationship between online profiling and publishing ( 46 ). Kudos, a powerful toolkit for authors, is yet another innovative option for strengthening scholarly reputation and comprehensively measuring the impact of publications. This service is integrated with the Web of Science citation tracking and ScholarOne and Aries editorial management systems. Kudos allows sharing links to articles of the profile holders through social media and scholarly networks, thus increasing chances of their use ( 72 ). A recent study showed that authors discussing and sharing their articles via Kudos increase downloads of these items by 23% ( 73 ).

But advances in the digitization and social networking have also created challenges, which will prevail and grow in the coming years. Paradoxically, one of the pressing issues is the wide variety of online platforms offering diverse services for setting individual accounts. Not all researchers embrace the advantages of the available platforms and some of them question the quality and credibility of information provided on social networking channels ( 39 ). On the other hand, it is difficult for the individual researcher to discern the advantages and disadvantages of each platform, and continuing proliferation of such platforms is likely to make this problem even worse. There is a real risk that early career researchers aiming to enhance their profile and optimize their visibility may spend more time updating their profile in multiple networking platforms than continuing to be academically productive. Research and academic institutions, in turn, fail to incorporate relevant topics in the process of education and make online profiling mandatory. In the wake of proliferation of profiling platforms, ORCID is perhaps the only universal option which can become mandatory for early career researchers and senior scholars alike.

Research managers, journal editors, and publishers are in their position to make the use of reliable profiling platforms mandatory for ranking scholars. Given the preferential use of some websites for profiling authors in certain disciplines (e.g., PubMed for medicine, Academia.edu for social sciences and humanities), a combined approach can be viewed as an optimal solution ( Table 2 ).

With the increasing use of various online tools for research, it is likely that new complementary profiling platforms will be offered and established ones will be upgraded to meet the growing needs of interdisciplinary research and scholarly publishing. It is much desirable to strengthen the complementarity (“cross-talk”) of profiling platforms so that one could easily update, secure, validate, and populate each of them with information from a single source.

DISCLOSURE: The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any institution.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTION: Conceptualization: Gasparyan AY, Yessirkepov M, Endovitskiy DA, Kitas GD. Methodology: Gasparyan AY, Nurmashev B, Yessirkepov M, Voronov AA. Writing - original draft: Gasparyan AY, Yessirkepov M, Kitas GD. Writing - review & editing: Gasparyan AY, Nurmashev B, Yessirkepov M, Endovitskiy DA, Voronov AA, Kitas GD.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Trending Articles

• ITPRIPL1 binds CD3ε to impede T cell activation and enable tumor immune evasion. Deng S, et al. Cell. 2024. PMID: 38614099
• A pan-cancer analysis of the microbiome in metastatic cancer. Battaglia TW, et al. Cell. 2024. PMID: 38599211
• Time-series reconstruction of the molecular architecture of human centriole assembly. Laporte MH, et al. Cell. 2024. PMID: 38604175
• Alectinib in Resected ALK -Positive Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer. Wu YL, et al. N Engl J Med. 2024. PMID: 38598794 Clinical Trial.
• NINJ1 mediates plasma membrane rupture by cutting and releasing membrane disks. David L, et al. Cell. 2024. PMID: 38614101

Latest Literature

• Cochrane Database Syst Rev (1)
• Diabetes Care (2)
• J Clin Endocrinol Metab (3)
• J Clin Invest (2)
• J Neurosci (4)
• Nature (12)
• Pediatrics (1)
• Science (1)

NCBI Literature Resources

MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer

The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited.

Finding Research Articles in PubMed and CINAHL

Finding nursing authors in cinahl plus, finding son authors in pubmed.

To find articles authored by nurses in CINAHL Complete :

After entering your search topic, under Limit Your Results, click on either:

• First Author is Nurse: If you apply this limit, you will only retrieve records where it is confirmed that the first author of an article is a nurse, according to credentials noted in the article.
• Any Author is Nurse: If you apply this limit, you will only retrieve records where at least one author is a nurse, according to the credentials noted in the article.

NOTE:   The written by a nurse limiters apply only to records from November 2009 and forward.

To find articles authored by University of Washington nurses:

After entering your search topic, in the second Search box enter University of Washington and change the drop-down menu to:  AF Author Affiliation.

When checking your Results, look at the Affiliation field to see if author is from the UW School of Nursing.

To find articles authored by University of Washington School of Nursing faculty in PubMed :

Use the AD Address field.

Add the following to your search topic:  nursing [ad] AND "university of washington" [ad]

         Example:  irritable bowel syndrome AND nursing [ad] AND "university of washington" [ad]

• << Previous: CINAHL
• Next: APA Style >>
• Last Updated: Jun 22, 2023 1:19 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uw.edu/hsl/nmeth403

Be boundless

1959 NE Pacific Street | T334 Health Sciences Building | Box 357155 | Seattle, WA 98195-7155 | 206-543-3390

© 2024 University of Washington | Seattle, WA

Chemical Science

New perspective crosslinking electrochemistry and other research fields: beyond electrochemical reactors †.

* Corresponding authors

a School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China E-mail: [email protected]

Over the years, electrochemical reactors have evolved significantly, with modern reactors now able to achieve a high current density and power output in compact sizes. This leap in performance has not only greatly accelerated the rate of electrochemical reactions but also had a broader impact on the environment. Traditional research perspectives, focused primarily on the internal working systems of reactors, possibly overlook the potential of electrochemical systems in regulating their surrounding environment. A novel research perspective considering the interaction between electrochemical processes and their environmental context as a unified subject of study has gradually emerged alongside the dramatic development of electrochemical techniques. This viewpoint introduces a paradigm shift: electrochemical reactors are not isolated entities but rather are integral parts that interact with their surroundings. Correspondingly, this calls for an innovative research methodology that goes beyond studying the electrochemical processes in isolation. Rather, it integrates the design of the electrochemical system with its specific application environment, ensuring seamless integration for optimal performance under various practical conditions. Therefore, performance metrics should include not only the basic parameters of the electrochemical reactions but also the adaptability of the electrochemical system in real-world scenarios beyond the laboratory. By focusing on environmental integration and application-driven design, the applications of electrochemical technology can be more effectively leveraged. This perspective is exemplified by an electrochemical system based on coupled cathodic oxygen reduction and anodic oxygen evolution reactions. By adopting this new research paradigm, the applications of this electrochemical system can be extended to fields like medical treatment, food science, and microbial fermentation, with an emphasis on tailored designs for these specific application fields. This comprehensive and systematic new research approach aims to fully explore the potential applications of electrochemical technology and foster interdisciplinary collaboration in the electrochemical field.

Supplementary files

• Supplementary information PDF (119K)

Transparent peer review

To support increased transparency, we offer authors the option to publish the peer review history alongside their article.

View this article’s peer review history

Article information

Download Citation

Permissions.

New perspective crosslinking electrochemistry and other research fields: beyond electrochemical reactors

Y. Zhang and Y. Wu, Chem. Sci. , 2024, Advance Article , DOI: 10.1039/D3SC06983D

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence . You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication , please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page .

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page .

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content .

Social activity

Search articles by author.

This article has not yet been cited.

Advertisements

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Advice for the Unmotivated

• Robin Abrahams
• Boris Groysberg

How to reignite your enthusiasm for work

Employee disengagement is rampant in the workplace. We’ve all experienced it as customers encountering unhelpful retail clerks and as colleagues dealing with apathetic teammates. But what happens when you yourself feel dead at work?

This article describes what you as an individual can do to sustain your motivation or recover it, even in the most stultifying of jobs. After synthesizing research on this challenge and experimenting with various strategies, the authors have developed a process for recharging yourself called DEAR.

The first step is to detach and objectively analyze your situation so that you can make wise choices about it, instead of reacting in a fight-or-flight way. At day’s end, review what went well at your job and then mentally disconnect from it to give yourself a break. Meditation and exercise can help you do that and will improve your mood and cognitive function. Next, show empathy. Practice self-care, make friends, recognize the accomplishments of others, seek their views, and help them. Research shows that this combats burnout. Third, take action: achieve small wins, invest in rewarding outside activities, redefine your responsibilities, and turn uninteresting tasks into games. Ask yourself how someone you admire would behave in your situation, and dress in a way that projects confidence. Last, reframe your thinking: Focus on the informal roles you enjoy at work, your job’s higher-order purpose, and how others benefit from your work. All these techniques will improve your mental health and increase the energy you bring to your job—even if it is not what you’d like it to be.

In virtually everyone’s career, there comes a time when motivation and interest vanish. The usual tasks feel tedious. It’s hard to muster the energy for new projects. Though we go through the motions of being good employees or managers, we’re not really “there.” We become ghosts or zombies: the working dead.

• Robin Abrahams is a research associate at Harvard Business School.
• BG Boris Groysberg is a professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate at the school’s Race, Gender & Equity Initiative. He is the coauthor, with Colleen Ammerman, of Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021). bgroysberg

Partner Center

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• 15 April 2024

Revealed: the ten research papers that policy documents cite most

• Dalmeet Singh Chawla 0

Dalmeet Singh Chawla is a freelance science journalist based in London.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Policymakers often work behind closed doors — but the documents they produce offer clues about the research that influences them. Credit: Stefan Rousseau/Getty

When David Autor co-wrote a paper on how computerization affects job skill demands more than 20 years ago, a journal took 18 months to consider it — only to reject it after review. He went on to submit it to The Quarterly Journal of Economics , which eventually published the work 1 in November 2003.

Autor’s paper is now the third most cited in policy documents worldwide, according to an analysis of data provided exclusively to Nature . It has accumulated around 1,100 citations in policy documents, show figures from the London-based firm Overton (see ‘The most-cited papers in policy’), which maintains a database of more than 12 million policy documents, think-tank papers, white papers and guidelines.

“I thought it was destined to be quite an obscure paper,” recalls Autor, a public-policy scholar and economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “I’m excited that a lot of people are citing it.”

The most-cited papers in policy

Economics papers dominate the top ten papers that policy documents reference most.

Data from Sage Policy Profiles as of 15 April 2024

The top ten most cited papers in policy documents are dominated by economics research. When economics studies are excluded, a 1997 Nature paper 2 about Earth’s ecosystem services and natural capital is second on the list, with more than 900 policy citations. The paper has also garnered more than 32,000 references from other studies, according to Google Scholar. Other highly cited non-economics studies include works on planetary boundaries, sustainable foods and the future of employment (see ‘Most-cited papers — excluding economics research’).

These lists provide insight into the types of research that politicians pay attention to, but policy citations don’t necessarily imply impact or influence, and Overton’s database has a bias towards documents published in English.

Interdisciplinary impact

Overton usually charges a licence fee to access its citation data. But last year, the firm worked with the London-based publisher Sage to release a free web-based tool that allows any researcher to find out how many times policy documents have cited their papers or mention their names. Overton and Sage said they created the tool, called Sage Policy Profiles, to help researchers to demonstrate the impact or influence their work might be having on policy. This can be useful for researchers during promotion or tenure interviews and in grant applications.

Autor thinks his study stands out because his paper was different from what other economists were writing at the time. It suggested that ‘middle-skill’ work, typically done in offices or factories by people who haven’t attended university, was going to be largely automated, leaving workers with either highly skilled jobs or manual work. “It has stood the test of time,” he says, “and it got people to focus on what I think is the right problem.” That topic is just as relevant today, Autor says, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence.

Most-cited papers — excluding economics research

When economics studies are excluded, the research papers that policy documents most commonly reference cover topics including climate change and nutrition.

Walter Willett, an epidemiologist and food scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, thinks that interdisciplinary teams are most likely to gain a lot of policy citations. He co-authored a paper on the list of most cited non-economics studies: a 2019 work 3 that was part of a Lancet commission to investigate how to feed the global population a healthy and environmentally sustainable diet by 2050 and has accumulated more than 600 policy citations.

“I think it had an impact because it was clearly a multidisciplinary effort,” says Willett. The work was co-authored by 37 scientists from 17 countries. The team included researchers from disciplines including food science, health metrics, climate change, ecology and evolution and bioethics. “None of us could have done this on our own. It really did require working with people outside our fields.”

Sverker Sörlin, an environmental historian at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, agrees that papers with a diverse set of authors often attract more policy citations. “It’s the combined effect that is often the key to getting more influence,” he says.

Has your research influenced policy? Use this free tool to check

Sörlin co-authored two papers in the list of top ten non-economics papers. One of those is a 2015 Science paper 4 on planetary boundaries — a concept defining the environmental limits in which humanity can develop and thrive — which has attracted more than 750 policy citations. Sörlin thinks one reason it has been popular is that it’s a sequel to a 2009 Nature paper 5 he co-authored on the same topic, which has been cited by policy documents 575 times.

Although policy citations don’t necessarily imply influence, Willett has seen evidence that his paper is prompting changes in policy. He points to Denmark as an example, noting that the nation is reformatting its dietary guidelines in line with the study’s recommendations. “I certainly can’t say that this document is the only thing that’s changing their guidelines,” he says. But “this gave it the support and credibility that allowed them to go forward”.

Broad brush

Peter Gluckman, who was the chief science adviser to the prime minister of New Zealand between 2009 and 2018, is not surprised by the lists. He expects policymakers to refer to broad-brush papers rather than those reporting on incremental advances in a field.

Gluckman, a paediatrician and biomedical scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, notes that it’s important to consider the context in which papers are being cited, because studies reporting controversial findings sometimes attract many citations. He also warns that the list is probably not comprehensive: many policy papers are not easily accessible to tools such as Overton, which uses text mining to compile data, and so will not be included in the database.

The top 100 papers

“The thing that worries me most is the age of the papers that are involved,” Gluckman says. “Does that tell us something about just the way the analysis is done or that relatively few papers get heavily used in policymaking?”

Gluckman says it’s strange that some recent work on climate change, food security, social cohesion and similar areas hasn’t made it to the non-economics list. “Maybe it’s just because they’re not being referred to,” he says, or perhaps that work is cited, in turn, in the broad-scope papers that are most heavily referenced in policy documents.

As for Sage Policy Profiles, Gluckman says it’s always useful to get an idea of which studies are attracting attention from policymakers, but he notes that studies often take years to influence policy. “Yet the average academic is trying to make a claim here and now that their current work is having an impact,” he adds. “So there’s a disconnect there.”

Willett thinks policy citations are probably more important than scholarly citations in other papers. “In the end, we don’t want this to just sit on an academic shelf.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00660-1

Autor, D. H., Levy, F. & Murnane, R. J. Q. J. Econ. 118 , 1279–1333 (2003).

Article   Google Scholar  

Costanza, R. et al. Nature 387 , 253–260 (1997).

Willett, W. et al. Lancet 393 , 447–492 (2019).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Steffen, W. et al. Science 347 , 1259855 (2015).

Rockström, J. et al. Nature 461 , 472–475 (2009).

Download references

Reprints and permissions

Related Articles

Use game theory for climate models that really help reach net zero goals

Correspondence 16 APR 24

Female academics need more support — in China as elsewhere

The world needs a COP for water like the one for climate change

Last-mile delivery increases vaccine uptake in Sierra Leone

Article 13 MAR 24

Global supply chains amplify economic costs of future extreme heat risk

How science is helping farmers to find a balance between agriculture and solar farms

Spotlight 19 FEB 24

Postdoctoral Research Associate position at University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Postdoctoral Research Associate position at University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center   The Kamiya Mehla lab at the newly established Departmen...

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Computational Postdoctoral Fellow with a Strong Background in Bioinformatics

Houston, Texas (US)

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Locum Associate or Senior Editor (Immunology), Nature Communications

The Editor in Immunology at Nature Communications will handle original research papers and work on all aspects of the editorial process.

London, Beijing or Shanghai - Hybrid working model

Springer Nature Ltd

Assistant Professor - Cell Physiology & Molecular Biophysics

Opportunity in the Department of Cell Physiology and Molecular Biophysics (CPMB) at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC)

Lubbock, Texas

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, School of Medicine

Postdoctoral Associate- Curing Brain Tumors

Baylor College of Medicine (BCM)

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies