NATURE|Vol 451|14 February 2008
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NEWS FEATURE NATURE|Vol 451|14 February 2008 Three researchers in Jia Wei’s lab with the surname Wang, Xiao-yan, Xiao-rong and Xiao-xue (left to right, with Chinese names above), all publish in English as X. Wang. Identity crisis Chinese authors are publishing more and more papers, but are they receiving due credit and recognition for their work? Not if their names get confused along the way. Jane Qiu reports. ia Wei, associate dean at the pharmacy journals, Chinese researchers adopt a phonetic Asian researchers are less likely to be invited school of Shanghai Jiao Tong University version of their names, converted through to participate in collaborative projects or to can remember hundreds of metabolic the pinyin romanization system, which uses become reviewers,” says Ito. LI HOU-KAI Jpathways by heart, but he gets confused the Latin alphabet to represent sounds from Publishers make things worse by having by his graduate students’ publications. Three Chinese. This approach, however, is not varying rules for Asian names. For example, of his students — Wang Xiao-yan, Wang bi directionally unique. There are two Chi- journals differ in how they abbreviate polysyl- Xiao-rong and Wang Xiao-xue (pictured nese surnames that can be ‘spelt’ as Wang, for labic Asian names. If journals abbreviated all above with Jia) have completely different instance. And the problem is compounded the Chinese characters of a given name (Xiao- two-character given names in Chinese, but by the sheer number of Chinese researchers rong becoming X. R. and Xiao-xue becoming all publish under the abbreviated name X. who have not just the same X. X., rather than shortening Wang. “I really have a hard time sorting out surname, but also the same them to just X.), Jia says that who has published what,” Jia sighs. initial. Searching the bio- “I really have a hard it would help to distinguish A similar confusion could arise if John Rob- medical-literature database time sorting out who between researchers’ publica- erts and Jane Roberts worked in the same lab PubMed, curated by the US has published what.” tions. “This is very problematic and both published as J. Roberts. But name rec- National Library of Medicine, when we appraise researchers’ ognition in China is compounded by the chal- for articles published by ‘Wang — Jia Wei performance or during head- lenges of transliterating Chinese characters for X’ results in 8,904 entries, and hunting,” he says. English-language publications, and by overuse this number rises almost daily. Similarly, some journals insist on listing given of a few common surnames by the growing This issue is not unique to the Chinese. “Japa- names first and surname second, whereas oth- population. Estimates by China’s Ministry of nese and Korean names have the same problem ers allow authors to present their names accord- Public Security suggest that more than 1.1 bil- when published in English,” says Masao Ito, ing to the tradition in their own countries. Take, lion people — around 85% of China’s popula- president of the Human Frontier Science Pro- for instance, two researchers previously work- tion — share just 129 surnames. Problems with gram based in Strasbourg, France, which pro- ing on nanocarbon technology at Tsinghua abbreviations, ordering of given names and motes international research in the life sciences. University in Beijing, Yang Wei and Wei Yang surnames and inconsistent journal practices Not surprisingly, researchers and editors using (see ‘Character confusion’). According to Yang heighten the confusion. search engines and publication databases find Wei, now at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, When publishing in English-language it difficult to identify Asian authors. “As a result, not only did several researchers at Tsinghua 766 NATURE|Vol 451|14 February 2008 NEWS FEATURE have exactly the same name as his, but he shares author so that they have an overview of their the same initial with several other Yang’s work- Character confusion personal data and can make corrections. “This ing on nanocarbons elsewhere. “You would be is akin to a researcher’s passport, which follows Apart from unhelpful abbreviations (see lucky to be able to locate the researcher you are them wherever they go,” says Sun. image opposite), there are two other ways looking for,” he says. in which conversion of Chinese names into Elsevier is not the only company offer- The problem is sufficiently widespread that English can cause problems. ing such commercial products. Last month, some researchers have taken advantage of the Thomson Scientific in Philadelphia unveiled ambiguity. Surgeon Liu Hui, who padded his its own ResearcherID, which allows research- CV with publications by another researcher ers to create stable personal identifiers to who shared his surname and initial, rose to manage their citation metrics. The software become an assistant dean at the prestigious allocates a number during a one-time regis- Tsinghua University. But the discrepancies tration. “ResearcherID resolves any ambiguity were noticed and he was dismissed by the uni- surrounding published works and provides a versity in March 2006. safe space for virtual collaboration,” says Jim And if Asians can’t distinguish between Pringle, Thomson’s vice-president of product researchers from their own country, it’s much Li Yan Li Yan development. The service currently has some more challenging for Westerners, says Gene 3,500 invited users. Sprouse, editor-in-chief of the research jour- Phonetic confusion Two researchers with nals for the American Physical Society. “When different Chinese names both have their United front names transliterated as Li Yan in English. I asked my editors why we have so few Asian Librarian Susan Fingerman at Johns Hopkins reviewers, they said that it’s because so many University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Asian researchers have the same surname and Laurel, Maryland, thinks that Elsevier’s initial that they have difficulties in pinpointing claim of accuracy in identifying authors “is the appropriate ones,” Sprouse says. And the probably overblown”. In any case, she argues, problem will only get worse as Asian authors these approaches can provide only part of publish more papers, he adds. the solution because the problem of author Publications from China, Japan and South identification lies farther upstream in pub- Korea have increased rapidly in recent years, lishing — with journals having inconsist- and by 2006 made up one-fifth of the scien- Wei Yang Yang Wei ent rules for Asian names. She thinks that tific literature indexed by Thomson Scientific’s publishers should get together to agree on Science Citation Index (SCI) — roughly two- Mixed-up order Researchers named Yang a uniform approach to author names. “Only thirds of the amount from the United States Wei and Wei Yang can be confused if journals then could author identification systems be (L. Leydesdorff and C. Wagner Scientometrics; in have different rules for the ordering of given truly useful,” she says. the press). Publications by authors in mainland names and surnames. The products currently in the market, China indexed by the SCI are growing particu- however, fall short of providing an identifier larly fast, from 2.3% in 1996 to 8.4% in 2006. with searching citations with Asian authors. that works across all databases. One solution In many cases users can narrow down their may come from CrossRef — a coalition of More than words search by typing in keywords or the author’s 2,046 scholarly publishers, including Elsevier To address this trend, the American Physical affiliation. However, many researchers change and Nature Publishing Group — that wants Society has taken the unusual step of offering affiliations every few years or work in multiple to introduce a Contributor ID, similar to its its authors the option to list their names in Chi- fields. And the narrowing-down process can digital object identifiers (DOIs) for electronic nese, Japanese or Korean characters, in addi- be daunting and time-consuming. content. “CrossRef has been considering the tion to the transliterated English version. “This “It’s all about efficiency,” says Sun Xiao-peng, idea of a universal author DOI registration for is not just a publishing issue,” says Sprouse. a manager at the Beijing office of the Dutch sometime,” says Geoffrey Bilder, CrossRef’s “A person’s name is important. Our initiative science and technical publisher Elsevier. “It’s director of strategic initiatives. Bilder says that is a statement that we respect our Asian col- a matter of whether an author can be located both algorithm and user-generated systems are leagues and welcome their submissions to our in 15 minutes or 6 hours.” He doubts whether prone to errors and what CrossRef can offer is journals.” The society may extend the offer to searching in native languages would help authentication, which is essential if an identi- other languages, such as Arabic. because it’s extremely difficult for researchers fier is to be used for professional purposes. Although many welcome to search names in a language Later on this year, CrossRef will trial a the society’s move, some doubt “You would be lucky unfamiliar to them. He says that proto type system that will invite contributors whether other publishers will Elsevier has tools — including — including authors of books and academic rush to adopt the strategy. To to be able to locate its Scopus author identifier papers — to register their material. The pub- print in several foreign alpha- the researcher you — that provide an alternative lications listed by the authors will then be bets, typesetters would need to are looking for.” way to identify both Asian and authenticated through linking to publishers’ incorporate fonts and codes for Western authors with common websites. every one of them, raising costs.