Research information management

Research information management (RIM) refers to the collection and reuse of information and data about research and scholarly activities. This page connects RIM resources to UMN researchers and administrators, as well as students and community members who want to identify campus experts.

Experts@Minnesota Find, connect, collaborate

Experts@Minnesota contains public profiles of University faculty and staff, and public pages for departments, colleges, campuses, and centers.

Other RIM resources

ORCID

ORCID iDs (and why you should have one)
Connect and automate your scholarly profiles
More about scholarly identity

Demonstrating impact

RIM use cases

What is RIM?

Scholarly identity

Scholarly identity is what people—fellow researchers, students, or potential employers—find when they look up a researcher online. This may include:

presentations and publications,
fellowships and grants, and/or
courses taught.
Research interests

Think of it as an online curriculum vitae or resume. It’s optional to manage this identity, but it exists whether managed or not.

Managing scholarly identity

What are the results when you search your own name? How long does it take to find your work? Does a personal social media account appear first? Think of managing your scholarly identity as taking control of your digital narrative. Start reviewing your identity early and often as possible.

Managing and taking control of scholarly identity can:

increase the discoverability of your work and set yourself apart,
enable research relationships across institutions, and
reduce false or misleading information in search results.

Take your first steps towards managing your scholarly identity.

Keep a list of your publications, datasets, and grey literature.
Use online services such as Experts@Minnesota, ORCiD, Google Scholar, and LinkedIn.

Consider what you want kept private and use privacy settings

Protect your profile and feeds.
Hide profiles from search engines.
Lock comment sections of blogs.

ORCiD ID

Every scholar should have an ORCiD ID. An ORCiD ID is

unique to you (unlike your name),
persistent throughout your career (unlike your institutional affiliations), and
easy to get (under a minute at orcid.org).

Once you have created an ORCiD ID, write down the number and use it consistently. Many publishers and funders will ask for it, but add the number along with your name even if you aren't asked. Doing so will make it easier for any individual or service to pull together all of your research in one place, and you won't have to worry about losing a part of your scholarly identity if you change your name or move to a different institution.

For more information about ORCiD, visit our ORCiD web page.

Profile options

Experts@Minnesota

Faculty members, post-doctoral associates, or researchers with an appointment at the Twin Cities or Duluth campuses probably have an Experts@Minnesota profile. Experts@Minnesota

informs the public about the research work of the University of Minnesota, and
provides a tool for researchers to find and learn about each other

Publication and other research output information stored in Experts@Minnesota can be

used for internal reporting, analysis, and decision making, and
repurposed for departmental, center, and faculty websites.

Learn more about enhancing your profile.

Get help with your profile

ORCiD profile

Create an ORCiD ID, to get an ORCiD profile page.

The page is useful as a way to ensure everything that should be associated with you is associated with you. Add other names you have used when publishing, organizational affiliations, and identifiers from other databases.

Grant permissions to databases such as Experts@Minnesota, Web of Science, or Scopus to automatically update ORCID when they encounter new publications in your record.

Web of Science Author Record

Web of Science tracks publications from over 24,000 journals. Anyone who has published in one will have an author record that they can claim. Occasionally there might be more than one author record assigned to one individual. This can be because of name changes, variations in how your name is represented (e.g., using a middle initial or a shortened version of your name), changes in affiliation, or publishing across many different disciplines. Once you create an account within Web of Science and claim your author record(s), you can request that they be merged and suggest corrections if you find an error.

Merge author records from the Author Search Results page.

For more on merging author records, visit Clarivate's website.

Web of Science Author Record walk-through

Google Scholar

Google Scholar profiles pull together your existing publications, and notify you when Google Scholar encounters new publications that may be yours. Your profile is included in Google Scholar searches for your name, and your page shows links to co-authors as well as citation information.

Microsoft Academic

Like Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic is a place to search for publications.

Create an account, claim publications, add a profile picture, and include affiliations and research interests.

Your page shows number of papers and number of citations to them, and links to co-authors, their affiliations, journals and conferences in which you've published, and research topics covered by your work.

ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a for-profit social networking site used most often by researchers in the sciences.

Set up an account for free and use it to follow particular researchers or research interests. You can add a list of your publications, and ResearchGate will strongly encourage you to add PDFs as well. You should do so only if you are sure you have retained the right to do so in your agreement with the publisher.

Researchers who want to share the full text of their publications without using a for-profit service can explore the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy.

Academia.edu

Academia.edu is a for-profit social networking site that has users in a wider range of disciplines than ResearchGate. Academia.edu is free for basic features but charges for additional functions.

Like ResearchGate, you can follow other researchers and add your own publications (with or without PDF). If a PDF isn't included, potential readers can click a button to "request." This generates an email to the author. Only add a PDF if you are sure you have retained the right to do so in your agreement with the publisher.