Author affiliation
Author affiliation
Besides author names, publications contain author affiliations, providing more information on the university/faculty/department where each of the authors is affiliated with. An author can have multiple affiliations, for example in case where he or she is affiliated with multiple entities within the same university, or alternatively when someone is appointed at multiple institutions.
When listing affiliations, it is important to note that these should reflect where the research has taken place. Although it is tempting to include as many affiliations as possible, researchers should be aware that an affiliation should only be claimed if the actual work and research underlying the publication have been performed at the institution(s) listed in the affiliation.
So why is a correct author affiliation important?
In addition to help identifying authors (in case of multiple researchers having the same name) and giving recognition to the host institution, it also assigns responsibility to the institutions involved as it directs the readers of the work to ‘who to contact’ in case of questions and/or problems with the research, for example with regards to ethics and research integrity of the work. In addition, correct affiliations are of key importance for identifying potential (financial) conflicts of interests.
Providing a wrong affiliation, thereby failing to give credit to the appropriate institution. A common mistake is the situation in which a researcher worked in institution A, and after ending the experimental work, but before having the work published, moved to institution B. Although one might feel it makes sense to provide the affiliation of institution B on the publication, given this is the current institution of the researcher, this is not correct as the actual work was not performed in institution B. As such, only institution A should be listed. In order to illustrate that the researcher has switched institutions, the current address can be listed in a footnote.
Providing a false affiliation, this in order to manipulate the perception and credibility of the research and thus increase the chances to have it published. In addition, being a student at your university does not necessarily mean that your work can be published as originating from this university. Research activities that have been performed on the researcher’s own initiative and without any supervision by the host institution should not be attributed to the university.
Failing to disclose a relevant affiliation: researchers might get into the situation that omitting a certain affiliation might actually help to get the work published. This is often related to the concealing of a conflict of interest, which is of course an unacceptable practice.
When to think about this?
Affiliations are important to show which institutions are involved in the research project. This is applicable every time one communicates about the research project and it is as such relevant throughout the project:
- When submitting a research proposal to apply for funding
- For progress reports on the research (for example in the form of presentation at other institutions or congresses).
- When communicating at the end of the research project (in many cases in the form of a publication).
- During follow up after finalising the research.
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) provides a persistent identifier that will distinguish a researcher from other researchers throughout their scholarly career. An ORCID is globally unique and will continuously refer to the same researcher. Funders (e.g. NIH, HEFCE, …) and publishers (e.g. Elsevier, American Association for the Advancement of Science, PLOS, EMBO Press, …) increasingly require authors to provide their ORCID.
Using an ORCID has some advantages:
- For people with an identical or very similar name this identifier helps distinguish the information related to this one person. Names can also change (such as with marriage, change in gender), have cultural differences in name order, contain inconsistent use of first-name abbreviations and employ different writing systems.
- For people with multiple (simultaneous or consecutive) affiliations this identifier helps to pull together the information for this one person.
- All the elements above are not only valid for the person involved but also for third parties (e.g. during bibliometrics).
ORCID doesn’t want to be yet another platform where researchers need to manage a profile but wants to put forward an identifier through which the many separate profiles can be brought together (‘identifier switchboard’).
Source text: UGent (RE)search tips – ORCID: what is it?
