ORCID AND OTHER ACADEMIC SOCIAL ACCOUNTS OF A CANADIAN ECONOMIST PROMINENT IN THE MEDIA

In a bid to disambiguate authors’ names, ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) was created in 2012 as a bold initiative, and has been increasingly used by academic publishers to identify authors. On this platform, author’s have the freedom to maintain the accuracy of their academic record. ORCID profiles that are incomplete defeat the purpose of that system, since inaccuracies cast doubt on the information therein. In contrast, complete and up-to-date ORCIDs benefit authors and the academic community as they act as tools of transparency and verification. It is in the interest of authors to maintain their ORCID profiles complete, accurate and up to date. In this paper, the public ORCID profile of a Canadian economics academic (Derek Pyne; orcid:0000-0003-0849-0895) with a high media profile and a modest publishing profile (i.e., less than 30 published papers throughout his entire career), was examined. Similarities and differences relative to seven other profiles for this academic (institutional, Google Scholar, Ideas/RePEc, Mendeley, Scopus Author ID, ResearcherID, KUDOS) are highlighted. This case study sheds important information that will allow economists and academics in other fields to reflect on the use of ORCID and other academic profiles.