Authorship

What is the difference between confirming authorship of a publication and adding it manually?

When you confirm authorship of a publication on ResearchGate, you are confirming that you are the author of a publication that is already listed in our database. When you add a publication manually, it just means that it wasn’t yet listed in our database.

How do I confirm authorship of research that I published under a different name?

If you published a research item under a different name, adding an alternative name lets you easily confirm authorship of your research:

You can add an alternative name in a few easy steps:

1. Go to your profile and click on Edit next to your name 
2. Click on the Edit name button at the bottom of the box that appears
3. Fill out the Alternative name fields and click Save. 

Note: For security reasons, you can only change your name three times within a 30-day period.

You can now claim publications that you published under either name.

I’m having trouble confirming authorship of my publications

If you’re having problems confirming authorship of a publication, it’s usually because your account name doesn’t match the name you published under. The best thing you can do here is to add an alternative author name to your ResearchGate account (see above).

If you have tried this and still can’t confirm authorship of a publication, you can request authorship of it directly from its ResearchGate page:

1. Go to the publication page by clicking on the publication's title
2. Click the More button at the top right of the page and then select Claim authorship - is this your work? from the drop-down list
3. Select the name you published with or click + Add name. A box will appear so that you can add additional information
4. Click on the blue Request authorship button.

We take erroneous authorship claims very seriously and review each case manually. As this can sometimes take a while, we appreciate your patience during this process.

Note: We do not currently add collaborators, translators, consortiums or signatories to the author lists of publications unless their names are explicitly stated on the full-text of the publication in the main author list. We are working on a better way to represent the contributions that researchers in this position have made to these publications. For edited books, where the editors' names appear on the cover but the chapters have variable authorship, editors can confirm authorship of the entire book while chapter authors can confirm authorship of their individual chapters. For conference proceedings, editors may appear in the author list, while individual conference papers and their authors should be added separately as individual publications.

The suggested publications are not mine

ResearchGate's authorship suggestions are designed to help you claim your publications as effectively as possible. You can always click This is not me if the publication is not yours, which will help the algorithm we use to make a more informed suggestion the next time. You’ll find the page where you can click This is not me here.

The best advice we can offer at this time is to keep declining authorship of articles that are not yours. The algorithm, as a result, becomes 'smarter' and chooses fewer publications to be sent your way.

The suggested publication is a duplicate/has incorrect metadata

ResearchGate's extensive publication database is compiled using publicly available metadata from other literature databases, including PubMed, NASA, and CiteSeer. The ResearchGate community also contributes to our publications database, by uploading publications manually. As a result, there may be times where we suggest a publication that you already have on your profile or publications with incorrect metadata. For publications you authored that have incorrect metadata, you can edit the publication after you've claimed it. 

For duplicates, ResearchGate automatically merges items where all information is identical, including title, date of publication, author list, and journal. However, please make sure only one page lists the DOI. This is how you can edit the items so that they merge automatically: 

1. Go to the publication’s ResearchGate page by clicking on the title of the publication
2. Click the More button at the top right of the page and select Edit from the drop-down list
3. Make the necessary changes
4. Click Save.

Please note: It can take up to 72 hours for the publications to be merged. 

If you have duplicates and prefer to delete one of them, simply do so by following our instructions on removing research.

Adding, editing, and removing co-author information

The best way to add, edit, or remove co-author information from a publication is to:

1. Go to your publication's page by clicking on the title

2. Click the More button at the top right of the page and select Edit from the drop-down list

3. Edit the Authors field as appropriate

4. Update the author information and click Request change.

Note: We review author changes manually, so there may be a short delay before your publication is updated.

Scientific contributions pages 

When browsing ResearchGate you might come across a page with your name or that of a colleague/co-author. We call these scientific contributions pages. 

Scientific contributions pages are created by ResearchGate and contain a list of published scientific works. They are automatically created based on bibliographic data we obtain from publicly available sources. in this way, they are different from profile pages, which are controlled by members. 

To claim your scientific contributions page (and all the publications that come along with it), click on 'Are you (Firstname Lastname)?' at the top right-hand side of the page. The contributions page will then be merged with your ResearchGate profile and all the details will match up to the details on your account.

If you know the researcher who should claim this scientific contributions page, click on the Invite button on the right-hand side. You'll be prompted to enter their email address. This will send an email to that researcher suggesting the contributions page to them.

A researcher has wrongly claimed co-authorship of my publication

Your co-author list is based on publications that are included on your profile. If there are co-authors that you don't recognize, there may be publications on your profile that have multiple authors listed on them as their research is a part of a compilation which also includes your publication. It might be possible that these authors are unknown to you however they are still listed as co-authors because their work is also included in the same publication.

An unknown co-author might also show up in your list if another researcher has mistakenly claimed authorship of your publication.

Our author match feature is designed to help you quickly confirm authorship of your publications on ResearchGate. The ease of this one-click process means mistakes can sometimes be made, so if another researcher has claimed to be your co-author, it is usually the result of an honest mistake.
If you notice that someone has mistakenly claimed co-authorship of your publication, you can edit the author list (see Adding, editing, and removing co-author information above).

If, however, the claimed profile is correct but you still don’t want their names to appear in your co-author list or the publications weren’t authored by you, you have the option to remove these publications from your profile. To do so, visit your Research tab in your profile, click on the downward-facing arrow under the title next to Add resources then select Remove. You will be able to choose from a number of different options, depending on whether you added the research item to ResearchGate yourself.

Another researcher has claimed my publications

If another researcher has claimed your publication, it is usually the result of an honest mistake.

To resolve this:

1. Go to the publication page by clicking on the publication's title
2. Click the More button at the top right of the page and select Claim authorship - is this your work? from the drop-down list
3. Select the author name you published under, or add if it's not yet appearing
4. Click on the blue Request authorship button.

We take erroneous authorship claims very seriously and review each case manually. As this can sometimes take a while, we appreciate your patience during this process.

A publication in my profile doesn’t belong to me

We try our best to accurately match publications to their authors, but mistakes can sometimes be made. The best way to remove a publication from your profile is to:

1. Go to your profile’s Research tab
2. Use the search tool and enter the title, then click on the downward-facing arrow below the publication you want to remove
3. Click Remove
4. Choose the option to Remove publication page from profile
5. Click Remove publication page

If you need to remove more than one publication, you can do this by going to your Research tab and clicking on the pencil icon above your list of publications.