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When different persons have an identical author name. How frequent are homonyms?

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  • Dag W. Aksnes

Abstract

The phenomenon that different persons may have the same author name (homonymy) represents a major problem for publication analysis at individual levels and for retriving publications based on author names more generally. In such cases, all publications from the persons sharing the name will be collected in search results. This makes it difficult to provide a true picture of a researcher's publication output. The present study examines how frequent homonyms occur in a population of more than 30,000 individuals. The population represents the entire set of research personell in Norway. It is found that 14% of the persons share their author name with one or more other individuals. For the remaining 86% there is a one‐to‐one correspondence. Thus, for the large majority of persons, homonyms do not represent a problem. In the final part of the article, potential practical applications of these findings are given particular attention.

Suggested Citation

  • Dag W. Aksnes, 2008. "When different persons have an identical author name. How frequent are homonyms?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 59(5), pages 838-841, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:59:y:2008:i:5:p:838-841
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.20788
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    Cited by:

    1. Jian Wang & Kaspars Berzins & Diana Hicks & Julia Melkers & Fang Xiao & Diogo Pinheiro, 2012. "A boosted-trees method for name disambiguation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(2), pages 391-411, November.
    2. Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Nees Jan Eck, 2020. "Collecting large-scale publication data at the level of individual researchers: a practical proposal for author name disambiguation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 883-907, May.
    3. Cathelijn J F Waaijer & Benoît Macaluso & Cassidy R Sugimoto & Vincent Larivière, 2016. "Stability and Longevity in the Publication Careers of U.S. Doctorate Recipients," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-15, April.
    4. Schmoch, Ulrich & Michels, Carolin & Schulze, Nicole & Neuhäusler, Peter, 2012. "Performance and Structures of the German Science System 2011: Germany in an international comparison, China's profile, behaviour of German authors, comparison of the Web of Science and Scopus," Studien zum deutschen Innovationssystem 9-2012, Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI) - Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation, Berlin.
    5. Camil Demetrescu & Andrea Ribichini & Marco Schaerf, 2018. "Accuracy of author names in bibliographic data sources: an Italian case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 1777-1791, December.
    6. Wu, Jiang, 2013. "Investigating the universal distributions of normalized indicators and developing field-independent index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 63-71.
    7. Lucy Amez, 2012. "Citation measures at the micro level: Influence of publication age, field, and uncitedness," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(7), pages 1459-1465, July.
    8. Jan Schulz, 2016. "Using Monte Carlo simulations to assess the impact of author name disambiguation quality on different bibliometric analyses," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1283-1298, June.
    9. Fredrik Niclas Piro & Dag W. Aksnes & Kristoffer Rørstad, 2013. "A macro analysis of productivity differences across fields: Challenges in the measurement of scientific publishing," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(2), pages 307-320, February.
    10. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo, 2011. "Evaluating research: from informed peer review to bibliometrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(3), pages 499-514, June.
    11. Kristoffer Rørstad & Dag W Aksnes & Fredrik Niclas Piro, 2021. "Generational differences in international research collaboration: A bibliometric study of Norwegian University staff," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(11), pages 1-21, November.

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