What would be the recommended solution if the user has only a single word in her name? She could fill in the other name field with some supporting text, but wouldn’t that be indexed by Google as part of the real name?
Thanks.
Hi @SeanXiaoZhao,
That’s a tricky situation, unfortunately – I’d suggest going into the database (see the authors table) and manually removing either the first name or the last name field. You won’t be able to do this via the web interface because both fields are currently marked required.
I looked into better ways to represent names a few months ago, and part of the problem is that not all of the standards we need to support can handle non-Western names.
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team
@asmecher, do you have documentation on which standards require a given name and surname combination? This is on Pitt’s wishlist as well.
Thank you; I’ll use the database method for now
@ctgraham, here’s a snippet of a conversation we had about user profiles which briefly delved into name representations:
- CrossRef wants “given name” (first and middle, like “Alexis Karl”) separately from “surname” (“Smecher”). When uncertain, and only then, the full name should be put in the “surname” field. (See http://www.crossref.org/schemas/common4.3.0.xsd)
- PubMed wants first, middle, and last names, with a whole set of rules on specifics. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/licensee/elements_descriptions.html#authorlist
- Different citation formats want specific name formats
My current thinking is that we’ll probably need to support both Western (first/middle/last) and non-Western (single field) formats, with some 3rd-party standards needing some impedance-matching depending on what’s available.
Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team