Name Ambiguity Problem

Definition: An attribution issue arising from two related problems: authors may use multiple names or monikers to publish work, and multiple authors in a single field may share full names. This makes accurate identification of authors on names and specialisms alone a difficult task. This can be addressed through the creation and use of unique digital identifiers that act akin to digital fingerprints such as ORCID.

Related terms: Authorship, DOI (digital object identifier), ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID)

Reference: Wilson and Fenner (2012)

Drafted and Reviewed by: Shannon Francis, Tsvetomira Dumbalska, Mahmoud Elsherif, Helena Hartmann, Wanyin Li, Charlotte R. Pennington

Note that we are currently working on an automated mechanism to link references cited above with their full-length version that can be found at https://forrt.org/glossary/references with all references used so far.