When different persons have an identical author name. How frequent are homonyms?

  • Authors:

  • Dag W. Aksnes

  • Affiliations:

  • NIFU STEP, Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, Wergelandsveien 7, NO-0167, Oslo, Norway

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

The phenomenon that different persons may have the same authorname (homonymy) represents a major problem for publication analysisat individual levels and for retriving publications based on authornames more generally. In such cases, all publications from thepersons sharing the name will be collected in search results. Thismakes it difficult to provide a true picture of a researcher'spublication output. The present study examines how frequenthomonyms occur in a population of more than 30,000 individuals. Thepopulation represents the entire set of research personell inNorway. It is found that 14% of the persons share their author namewith one or more other individuals. For the remaining 86% there isa one-to-one correspondence. Thus, for the large majority ofpersons, homonyms do not represent a problem. In the final part ofthe article, potential practical applications of these findings aregiven particular attention. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.