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Authorship
How can I make sure my publication list on INSPIRE is correct?
The author publication profile page says “Unknown” for my affiliation – what can I do?
How do I connect my ORCID iD to my INSPIRE Author Profile?
How can I include my ORCID on a paper?
Why do some works get a lot of separate records for the sections in INSPIRE?
References/Citations
I lost many citations. Can you fix it?
How can I correct a reference/citation or add a missing reference list?
Can I get more citation metrics?
Why is my citation count lower than in Google Scholar/ScienceDirect/Web of Science…?
Can I see citations per number of authors on the paper?
What does citable papers, self-citations, h-index, etc. mean?
Why do some papers receive citations from the past?
Formats
How do I get the CV/Citesummary/BibTeX/etc. output format?
Miscellaneous
Can anyone sign up for an ORCID?
What does “published” mean in INSPIRE?
From where does INSPIRE get its content?
I tried logging in with my ORCID but got caught in a loop. What should I do?
I want to do automated searching and receive machine readable responses. Do you have an API?
Why are some records not part of the INSPIRE Literature collection?
Authorship
Q. How can I make sure my publication list on INSPIRE is correct?
A. INSPIRE provides a tool that allows you to claim or remove authorship for the papers in your INSPIRE author profile. Claiming authorship for papers that are in another author’s profile is also possible. First you will have to make sure to create an INSPIRE author profile, and then follow our claiming guide to claim or remove papers from your profile. If you encounter any issues, please send us a request using the feedback form and we will claim them for you. (See our contact page if you have trouble accessing the form)
Q. The author publication profile page says “Unknown” for my affiliation – what can I do?
A. Please contact us and we will change it.
Q. How can I include my ORCID on a paper?
A. There is not currently a standardized way of including an ORCID on a paper. One possible method is to include it in the TeX file using the tag \thanks{}, which can display clickable links.
\author{P. Smith}
\email{psmith@fnal.gov}
\thanks{ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0000-0000-0001}
\affiliation{Fermilab, IL, USA}
\author{Q. Jones}
\email{jones@slac.stanford.edu}
\thanks{ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0000-0000-0002}
\affiliation{SLAC, CA, USA}
\author{R. Brown}
\email{brown@slac.stanford.edu}
\thanks{ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0000-0000-0003}
\affiliation{SLAC, CA, USA}
Q. I manage a large author list, e.g. for an experiment. Does INSPIRE have any tools to help me with this?
A. INSPIRE has an author management tool that allows you to easily remove authors, change affiliations, generate new author XML files, and create TeX files in Elsevier and APS format. If you would like to use this tool, please contact us, and we’ll get you set up. The first step is to get INSPIRE IDs for all authors in your collaboration and create an author.xml file. Information about the INSPIRE Collaboration Author List (i.e. the author.xml file) can be found in our Knowledge Base or directly in our Author List github repository.
Q. Why do some works get a lot of separate records for the sections in INSPIRE?
A. INSPIRE aims to both make individual works findable and give authors credit for their work. We have a long-standing policy of handling conference proceedings, and similar works, by creating records for all the individual contributions complete with their authors, titles, and reference lists, in addition to the creating a single record for the parent document. To avoid double-counting, the parent record lists only the editors and other volume-wide authors and no references. However, we only do this if each contribution is self-contained; it must have both its own author list and its own reference list. If these two conditions are not met, we will only have a single record in INSPIRE for the work.
References/Citations
Q. I lost many citations. Can you fix it?
A. Given our limited resources, we can’t manually inspect and fix all errors. However, we realize that having accurate citation counts that can be trusted by the community is a crucial feature. This is why citation counts for outliers who lose more than 5% of their citations will be corrected if a detailed report is submitted using the feedback form. (See our contact page if you have trouble accessing the form)
This report must mention:
- Which author profile is affected by the loss
- Which of their papers have lost citations
- Which papers used to cite your papers and now don’t
Please also check that the citations that disappeared are genuine citations by looking at the references of the citing paper on arXiv or the publisher website.
Q. How can I correct a reference/citation or add a missing reference list?
There are several ways to perform this correction. Please consult the dedicated help page for more information.
Q. Can I get more citation metrics?
A. You can view the citation summary and h-index of any HEP Literature search by clicking the toggle next to the sorting options at the top.
You can also view the same summary for a specific author on the author publication profile pages, where the toggle can be found under the author’s work history and above the list of works.
Q. The INSPIRE search results display says my paper has X citations but when I click on that link, the result is slightly less than X. Why is that and which is correct?
A. The citation count in the brief display is an approximation which sometimes overcounts by a small number due to citations from records which are later merged into other records and/or deleted. This is a speed optimization for display purposes in long result sets and not easily addressed. It will be fixed in the next iteration of INSPIRE, but we don’t have a timeline for this yet. For now, please contact us when you notice significant discrepancies.
In the meantime, the accurate number is given when the actual search refersto:recid:nnn is performed. For example, citations for Maldacena’s paper The Large N limit of superconformal field theories and supergravity (recid 451647) can be found with refersto:recid:451647.
Q. Why is my citation count lower than in Google Scholar/ScienceDirect/Web of Science…?
A. There are several reasons why INSPIRE’s citation counts may be lower than those of external sources, like Google Scholar:
INSPIRE only counts citations from other records within INSPIRE. Since INSPIRE is highly selective to papers within High Energy Physics, citations from papers outside HEP are usually not covered.
- INSPIRE does not possess the reference lists from older journal articles that we did not originally receive in preprint form. [See below for our plans to improve this.]
- We sometimes miss references that were added in a revised version.
- Although we invest considerable effort to discover HEP theses, our coverage in this area is far from complete.
- Google scholar sometimes over-counts by listing a preprint and the corresponding journal article separately.
We’re working to improve the completeness of our citation coverage in several ways:
- We’re working with publishers to add missing reference lists for older journal articles, but this will take time. In the interim, we don’t have the staff resources to fulfill requests from individual users to complete their citation lists. (But see the next item.)
- We are improving our workflow to better handle revised versions.
- We are investigating the possibility of displaying citation counts from external sources, e.g. from ADS.
Q. Where can I see my h-index?
A. The h-index can be found within the Citation Summary. To view this, click the toggle next to the sorting options on a Literature search or in an author profile (See Q. Can I get more citation metrics? above).
Q. Can I see citations per number of authors on the paper?
A. Usually people asking for this just want to exclude collaborations from the search. To do this, you can use the authorcount feature.
Q. Why do some papers receive citations from the past?
A. Some records in INSPIRE have citations from records with an earlier date than the cited paper. This is not necessarily a sign that INSPIRE violates causality. Since we have a single record for preprint, published article and multiple versions, there can be several dates in a record. Although the references might be updated, the earliest date is used in the record. Also no database is bug-free, sometimes we just have incorrect information in records. If you come across a mistake in our metadata, please report it by filling in this form.
Formats
Q. How do I get the CV/Citesummary/BibTeX/etc. output format?
A. The citesummary of any search can be found using the toggle at the top of the search results (see Q. Can I get more citation metrics? above). Click ‘cite’ at the bottom of each search result entry/full record to get the BibTeX and LaTeX of that record. ‘Cite all’ at the top of the search give BibTeX or LaTeX output for the full search results up to 1000 entries.
Q. How do I generate a properly ordered LaTeX/BibTeX bibliography from my LaTeX file? How do I convert a LaTeX bibliography to a BibTeX bibliography?
A. See Generating Your Bibliography.
Q. How do I handle utf-8 encoded accented characters in BibTeX/LaTeX entries (and why don’t you just use traditional TeX encoding)?
A. In the interest of extended character support for title and author display it is preferable to use utf-8, so INSPIRE gives output such as Väänänen (instead of V\"a\"an\"anen). Note that big commercial publishers like Elsevier and Springer also export BibTeX records with utf-8. Therefore using BibTeX/LaTeX in a utf-8 enabled way is already unavoidable when including entries from various sources.
When using LaTeX, add this line to the preamble of your file: \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
Since native utf-8 support in BibTeX is mostly limited to code points which can be encoded in one byte, the general trend is to migrate to BibLaTeX and biber, which can handle the full range of utf-8 (Unicode 6.0).
Miscellaneous
Q. Can anyone sign up for an ORCID?
A. Yes. Although ORCID is primarily intended for identifying researchers, anyone can register for an ORCID. INSPIRE requires an ORCID for certain actions such as suggesting content or posting a position to HEPJobs because it provides a simple login mechanism that enables users to later update records by themselves, without INSPIRE staff having to do anything.
To sign up for an ORCID go to https://orcid.org/register. We recommend including your full name, rather than just initials, and your current institution to make it easier to identify your ORCID when you want it in the future.
Q. What does “published” mean in INSPIRE?
A. “Published” means that the article has appeared in one of the principal refereed journals serving high energy physics and astrophysics. Solicited reviews in journals such as Reviews of Modern Physics, Physics Reports, the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science, and the reviews section of the International Journal of Modern Physics are also listed as “published.”. Articles in conference proceedings are not listed as “published”; this usage includes conference proceedings supplementary volumes of journals, for example, the proceedings supplements of Nuclear Physics B.
The primary measure of a researcher’s contribution to science is the production of relevant, original research. In HEP this is largely determined in the publication process of the major refereed journals such as JHEP, Physical Review D and Physics Letters B, where only papers of sufficiently high quality are accepted and previously published research is per se rejected. We therefore follow this philosophy and only attach the tag “published” to papers that appear in such journals. This screening necessitates both a high rejection rate and lengthy review period that would typically rule out a journal issue devoted to a conference proceedings, which operates on a fixed time-frame and seeks to include a majority of the papers presented at the conference.
An exception to the condition of originality is the review articles published in journals such as Physics Reports and Reviews of Modern Physics. Here the author has demonstrated sufficient mastery of a topic of such importance that it is of interest to a wider audience. In this synthesis of the history and particular issues of the topic a genuine contribution to science has been made. Nevertheless, these articles are always tagged as “review” to distinguish them from original research.
Naturally, there can still be papers presenting original research of exceptionally high quality which never appeared in a journal. These papers, however, will not be tagged “published” in INSPIRE.
Summary: In INSPIRE, “published” means the article has appeared in a major, refereed journal and presents new results.
Q: From where does INSPIRE get its content?
A. Please see our content sources page for a list of major sources.
Q: I tried logging in with my ORCID but got caught in a loop. What should I do?
A. You need to clear your cookies for the site inspirehep.net. Instructions for this can be found here.
Q: I want to do automated searching and receive machine readable responses. Do you have an API?
A. We have a REST API allowing scripts and other tools to access the contents of INSPIRE. It is documented here.
Q: Why are some records not part of the INSPIRE Literature collection?
A. The main INSPIRE Literature collection, accessible through the search, contains records relevant to High-Energy Physics and respecting our content policy. Some members of the INSPIRE collaboration additionally use INSPIRE as a platform to organize scientific information connected to their institution that is out of scope for INSPIRE. In order to prevent any confusion, those records are not displayed in the search results by default and contain a warning at the top of their detailed page to highlight that they are not part of the INSPIRE Literature collection.