title: Do we need a Unique Scientist ID for publications in biomedicine?
abstract: BACKGROUND: The PubMed database contains nearly 15 million references from more than 4,800 biomedical journals. In general, authors of scientific articles are addressed by their last name and forename initial. DISCUSSION: In general, names can be too common and not unique enough to be search criteria. Today, Ph.D. students, other researchers and women publish scientific work. A person may not only have one name but several names and publish under each name. A Unique Scientist ID could help to address people in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. As a starting point, perhaps PubMed could generate and manage such a scientist ID. SUMMARY: A Unique Scientist ID would improve knowledge management in science. Unfortunately in some of the publications, and then within the online databases, only one letter abbreviates the author's forename. A common name with only one initial could retrieve pertinent citations, but include many false drops (retrieval matching searched criteria but indisputably irrelevant).
authors.affiliation: German Cancer Research Center Heidelberg, Central Spectroscopy – Molecular Modeling, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany. a.bohne@dkfz-heidelberg.de.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bohne-Lang
authors.forename: Elke
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lang