Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher who has published three peer-reviewed articles in Scopus-indexed journals under a consistent name and affiliation will have a single Scopus Author ID automatically generated by Elsevier's matching algorithm, visible on their Scopus Author Details page alongside their document count and h-index within Scopus.
- Is an instance
A researcher who changed institutional affiliation mid-career, or who published early work under a maiden name and later work under a married name, searches their own name in Scopus and finds two separate Author ID profiles, each holding a subset of their output — they select both and submit a 'Request to merge authors' through Scopus, which Elsevier's team typically resolves within a few weeks.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
An ORCID iD is not a Scopus Author ID, even though many CRIS systems display them side by side — ORCID is a researcher-claimed, cross-publisher identifier the researcher registers and controls directly, while a Scopus Author ID is algorithmically assigned by Elsevier and can only be corrected through Scopus's own review process (the Author Feedback Wizard or a merge request), not edited by the researcher directly.
- Not an instance
A researcher with exactly one Scopus-indexed publication generally will not yet have a visible, stable Scopus Author ID profile in the same way a researcher with a longer indexed history does — Scopus's own guidance describes the ID as generated once a researcher has two or more Scopus-indexed documents, so a single early-career publication may not yet be enough for the algorithm to establish a distinct profile.
Editorial commentary
A Scopus Author ID is the numeric identifier Elsevier’s Scopus database automatically assigns to disambiguate and group a researcher’s indexed publications. Unlike an ORCID iD, a Scopus Author ID is not something a researcher registers or requests — it is generated algorithmically once Elsevier’s matching process has enough article metadata (name variants, affiliation history, subject classification, co-author network, citation patterns) to group two or more Scopus-indexed documents under what the algorithm judges to be the same person. It functions purely as an internal disambiguation key inside Scopus, not as an interoperable, cross-publisher persistent identifier in the ORCID or ROR sense.
How a Scopus Author ID gets assigned
Scopus’s algorithm builds an author profile from the metadata attached to indexed articles rather than from any information a researcher submits directly. Because the match runs on article-level signals — which can vary across a career (a name spelled differently, a change of institution, a shift in subject area, a change in habitual co-authors) — Elsevier’s own documentation acknowledges the algorithm “can rarely match all documents to a single profile with 100% accuracy.” In practice this means the same researcher can end up with two or more separate Scopus Author ID profiles, each holding a different subset of their publication record, rather than one complete profile.
Why duplicate Scopus Author IDs happen
This entry defines the identifier itself. For the step-by-step procedure — getting a Scopus Author ID, searching for yours by name, requesting a profile merge, and correcting a wrong affiliation — see Scopus Author Search: How to Find and Fix Your Author Profile.
Researchers cannot edit a Scopus Author ID’s underlying algorithmic match directly, but Scopus provides two related self-service routes to fix it:
- Requesting a merge. Searching one’s own name in Scopus and finding multiple author profiles that all belong to the same person, a researcher can select the relevant profiles and submit a “Request to merge authors.” Elsevier does not publish a turnaround figure for the wizard itself, stating only that changes are not immediate; for the equivalent correction raised with Scopus Support it documents approximately seven working days. Once processed, the previously split output consolidates under a single ID.
- The Scopus Author Feedback Wizard. This tool lets a researcher review their own profile, set a preferred name display, merge duplicate profiles, correct affiliation information, and add or remove specific documents that were mismatched to (or missing from) their profile. Submitted changes go to Elsevier for review and are approved or declined rather than applied automatically.
Because correction runs through Elsevier’s review rather than direct researcher edit, a Scopus Author ID profile can lag behind a researcher’s actual, current publication record for a period after a name or affiliation change — something a research office should account for when using Scopus-derived output counts for time-sensitive reporting.
How to Find Your Own Scopus Author ID
Because the identifier is assigned to you rather than requested by you, finding it is a lookup, not a registration. Elsevier documents the path as:
- From the Scopus home page, select the Authors tab.
- From the Search using dropdown, choose Author name — or choose ORCID and enter an ORCID iD instead, which is the more reliable route if you already have one.
- Enter the surname. Last name is the only required field; first name or initials and affiliation name are optional and serve to narrow a common-name result set.
- Select Search.
Results can be refined by affiliation, city, and country, and are sorted by document count in descending order by default. A Show exact matches only option limits results to the precise name ordering you typed — useful for a surname that also appears as a given name. Opening a result gives the Author details page, which Elsevier describes as providing “the author name, associated affiliations, Scopus Author ID information, and other name formats,” with a Show all author info control for the rest.
Two practical constraints worth knowing before you start looking:
- A profile only exists once two documents match. Elsevier states that “a profile is created automatically when two or more articles are linked to one name.” A researcher with a single indexed paper will not find an auto-generated profile in the ordinary way — Elsevier documents that “authors with only 1 document indexed in Scopus are not hyperlinked to their Author details page,” and that the author details are reached through the document record itself instead.
- Full profiles are subscription-gated, but not entirely closed. Elsevier is explicit that “only Scopus subscribers can see the full version of an Author Profile. Non-subscribers can see a limited version of an Author Profile (the first 10 documents and limited metadata).” For simply confirming that a profile exists and reading off its identifier, the limited view is usually enough; for auditing completeness across a full publication record, it is not.
Once you have the identifier, it is usable as a search key: Elsevier documents the advanced-search syntax AU-ID(…) for retrieving everything grouped under a given Author ID, which is the precise way to pull a researcher’s Scopus-indexed output rather than re-running an ambiguous name search.
A caveat on the click path above: Elsevier’s search documentation was last revised in mid-2025, while its own release notes list a replacement Authors search results page from April 2026. The tab and dropdown labels are what Elsevier currently documents; if the interface in front of you differs in wording, the sequence — author search, then open the profile — still holds.
How to Merge Duplicate Author Profiles
Duplicate profiles are the normal failure mode of algorithmic matching, not an unusual defect, and merging is a self-service request rather than a support ticket. The merge is initiated from the author search results list:
- Run an author search on your own name and identify every profile in the results that belongs to you.
- Tick the checkboxes next to those author names.
- Select Request to merge authors. The Author Feedback Wizard opens with the selected names already on the form.
- Select Start, then indicate whether you are the author or are submitting on behalf of the author — the wizard accommodates both, so a librarian or research office can legitimately file the request for a researcher.
- Choose the preferred name format that the merged profile should display.
- Review the documents that will sit under the merged profile, and the current affiliation selected from those already extracted from your indexed papers.
- Provide contact details and submit.
The same wizard is reachable from within a profile via Edit profile, which is the route to take when you are already looking at one of the duplicates rather than at a results list.
Elsevier does not publish what happens to the superseded identifiers — whether the merged profile retains one of the original Author IDs, and whether the retired ones continue to resolve, are not addressed in its current documentation. If a specific Scopus Author ID has been recorded in a CRIS, a funder profile, or a published biosketch, treat it as something to re-verify after a merge rather than assume it survived.
The Author Feedback Wizard: What It Can and Cannot Correct
The Author Feedback Wizard is Elsevier’s self-service correction tool, and Elsevier describes it as free. Documented scope:
- Set a preferred name display format.
- Update the current affiliation, chosen from affiliations already extracted from indexed documents.
- Add and remove documents — the fix for a paper wrongly assigned to you, or one of yours missing from your profile.
- Add and remove preprints.
- Add and remove awarded grants.
- Merge profiles, as above.
Elsevier lists the valid correction cases as: a publication indexed in Scopus has been wrongly assigned; the preferred name used to display the profile needs changing; a primary affiliation should be chosen from those extracted; and documents indexed in Scopus are missing from the profile.
What it will not do: it cannot change the underlying matching algorithm’s behaviour, and it cannot add a document that Scopus does not index in the first place. Elsevier documents two standing grounds for declining a correction request — that “the title is not currently indexed in Scopus,” or that “the publication was too long ago for us to make a change.” Profile splitting, as opposed to merging, is not a documented function of the wizard.
How long a correction takes
For the wizard itself, Elsevier gives no numeric turnaround, stating only that “changes are not immediate and do not appear in Scopus, or within the Author Feedback Wizard, until processing is complete.”
Published figures do exist for the parallel route of raising a correction with Scopus Support by email, and they are the only numbers Elsevier actually documents:
| Request type (Elsevier’s wording) | Stated turnaround |
|---|---|
| “My author profile is not accurate” | approximately 7 working days |
| “Some of my documents are missing” | approximately 17 working days |
| “Some of my information is missing or incorrect in my document(s)” | approximately 21 working days |
Elsevier adds that a request covering a large volume of changes — its example is ten or more articles, or an entire book — may take longer. Plan around the upper figures rather than the lower ones when a promotion file, a funder report, or a grant biosketch has a fixed deadline: the sequence of submit, review, and re-index is the part that a research office cannot compress.
Connecting a Scopus Author ID to ORCID
Elsevier documents a one-directional link. From within the Scopus author profile, the Connect to ORCID action authenticates against ORCID and then pushes the profile’s publications into the researcher’s ORCID record. ORCID iDs are also accepted as an input to Scopus author search, via the Search using dropdown — but that is ORCID used as a lookup key, not metadata flowing back into Scopus.
This asymmetry is the practically important point, and it is regularly stated the wrong way round: Scopus pushes to ORCID; Elsevier does not document Scopus importing works from ORCID. Adding a publication to your ORCID record therefore does nothing for your Scopus profile. Only a Scopus-side correction fixes a Scopus-side gap, which is why keeping an ORCID record current is not a substitute for checking the Scopus Author ID it sits beside.
Note also that the long-standing standalone Scopus-to-ORCID wizard hosted at orcid.scopusfeedback.com has been retired and now redirects into Scopus itself; the function lives inside the profile editor. Any institutional guidance still pointing researchers at that address is out of date. Elsevier’s release notes record the current ORCID connect flow being folded into the profile edit wizard in January 2026.
A note on naming: Elsevier’s own materials call this tool the Author Feedback Wizard (support articles and the product page), Author Edit Wizard , and Author Profile Wizard (release notes) in different places. They are the same tool; the in-product entry point is consistently labelled Edit profile.
Scopus Author ID vs. ORCID iD
The two are frequently confused because both show up as “your author ID” in grant applications, CVs, and CRIS profile fields, but they differ in ownership and portability:
- An ORCID iD is registered directly by the researcher, is free and permanent, and is designed to be cited across publishers, funders, and institutions — it does not depend on any single database’s indexing decisions.
- A Scopus Author ID is generated by Elsevier’s algorithm purely from what is indexed in Scopus, resolves only within Elsevier’s own ecosystem, and depends entirely on which of a researcher’s works Scopus has chosen to index (see how Scopus decides what to index in the main Scopus entry).
Scopus supports linking a Scopus Author ID to a researcher’s ORCID record, and many campus systems display both side by side, but linking does not make them equivalent — a research office should treat the Scopus Author ID as a Scopus-internal disambiguation layer that complements, rather than substitutes for, a researcher’s ORCID iD.
Scopus Author ID vs. Scopus EID
A second source of confusion sits inside Scopus itself, separate from the ORCID comparison above: the Scopus Author ID and the Scopus EID (Electronic ID) are both long, numeric-looking Scopus identifiers, but they identify different kinds of thing entirely — one an author, the other a single document. Mixing them up matters practically: pasting an EID into a field that expects an Author ID (or vice versa) simply fails to resolve.
| Scopus Author ID | Scopus EID | |
|---|---|---|
| Identifies | An author profile (a person, as matched by Scopus) | A single indexed document (one article, conference paper, or book chapter) |
| Format | Purely numeric, typically 10–11 digits — e.g. 57194658000 |
The prefix 2-s2.0- followed by digits — e.g. 2-s2.0-84881394200 |
| Where you see it | The URL of a Scopus Author Details page; the AU-ID(…) advanced-search syntax described above |
A document’s Scopus record URL; the exported citation/export file for a search result; DOI-to-Scopus lookup tools |
| How many a researcher has | Ideally one (in practice, sometimes several split profiles — see above) | One per Scopus-indexed document — a researcher with 40 indexed papers has 40 EIDs and, ideally, one Author ID grouping all of them |
In practice: if the number in front of you is bare digits and it identifies a person’s whole publication profile, it is a Scopus Author ID. If it starts with 2-s2.0- and points at one specific paper, it is an EID, and it belongs in a document citation or export, not in a CRIS “author identifier” field.
Role in research administration
Scopus Author IDs (and the related Scopus Affiliation ID for institutions) are commonly ingested by campus current research information systems such as Elements (Symplectic) and Pure to auto-populate publication lists and compute institution-level bibliometric indicators such as Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI). Because a stale or split Scopus Author ID directly understates a researcher’s indexed output in these reports, research offices supporting tenure and promotion files, annual research reporting, or grant biosketches often advise researchers to check their Scopus Author ID for duplicates and completeness alongside — not instead of — keeping their ORCID record current. For a full comparison of Scopus against Web of Science and OpenAlex as underlying databases, see Scopus vs Web of Science vs OpenAlex; for registering and maintaining the researcher-owned identifier it is most often paired with, see How to Register, Find, and Search for ORCID iDs.
Worked examples
- A researcher with a consistent name and affiliation across three Scopus-indexed articles has a single, complete Scopus Author ID automatically generated, shown on their Scopus Author Details page with their document count and Scopus-derived h-index.
- A researcher who changed affiliation mid-career finds their output split across two Scopus Author ID profiles when searching their own name, and resolves it by ticking both in the author results list and submitting a merge request through the Author Feedback Wizard.
Counter-example
An ORCID iD is not a Scopus Author ID: ORCID is researcher-registered, free, portable across publishers and funders, and controlled directly by the researcher; a Scopus Author ID is algorithmically generated by Elsevier from Scopus-indexed metadata alone and can only be corrected through Scopus’s own review process, not edited by the researcher directly.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find my Scopus Author ID?
A Scopus Author ID isn’t something you request — it’s generated automatically once Elsevier’s matching algorithm has enough indexed-article metadata to group documents under your name. Search your name in Scopus’s author search to see the profile that’s already been created. For the full step-by-step search and merge process, see Scopus Author Search: How to Find and Fix Your Author Profile.
Why do I have more than one Scopus Author ID?
Because the matching algorithm relies on article-level signals — name spelling, affiliation, subject classification, and co-author network — a change partway through a career, such as a new institution or a shift in research area, can cause the same person’s publications to be split across two or more separate profiles instead of grouped under one.
Can I edit or correct my Scopus Author ID myself?
Not directly. The underlying algorithmic match can’t be hand-edited, but you can request a profile merge for duplicates or use the Scopus Author Feedback Wizard to correct your preferred name, affiliation, or mismatched documents. Either route sends the change to Elsevier for review rather than applying it immediately.
How long does a Scopus Author ID merge request take?
Elsevier does not publish a turnaround time for the Author Feedback Wizard itself — only that “changes are not immediate and do not appear in Scopus, or within the Author Feedback Wizard, until processing is complete.” The one published figure is for the parallel route of raising the correction with Scopus Support, where Elsevier states approximately seven working days for “my author profile is not accurate” (rising to roughly 17 working days for missing documents and 21 for incorrect document metadata). Treat those as the planning numbers.
How do I find my Scopus Author ID without a subscription?
Select the Authors tab in Scopus, choose Author name (or ORCID) from the Search using dropdown, enter your surname, and open your profile; the Author details page carries the Scopus Author ID. Elsevier documents that non-subscribers can see a limited version of an Author Profile — the first 10 documents and limited metadata — which is normally enough to read off the identifier, though not enough to audit a full publication record.
Do I get a Scopus Author ID if I have only one indexed paper?
Not in the usual way. Elsevier states that a profile is created automatically once two or more articles are linked to one name, and that authors with only one document indexed in Scopus are not hyperlinked to an Author details page from author search results — their details are reached through the document record instead.
Will adding a paper to my ORCID record fix my Scopus profile?
No. Elsevier documents a Connect to ORCID action that pushes publications from a Scopus profile into ORCID, but does not document Scopus importing works from ORCID. The flow runs Scopus to ORCID, not the other way, so a Scopus-side gap has to be fixed on the Scopus side through the Author Feedback Wizard.
Can my librarian or research office submit a Scopus profile correction for me?
Yes. The Author Feedback Wizard asks the submitter to indicate whether they are the author or are acting on behalf of the author, so a third-party submission is an anticipated route rather than a workaround. Contact details are collected as part of the request.
Is a Scopus Author ID the same as an ORCID iD?
No. An ORCID iD is registered directly by the researcher, is free, and is portable across publishers and funders. A Scopus Author ID is generated automatically by Elsevier from Scopus-indexed metadata alone, resolves only within Scopus, and can be corrected only through Scopus’s own review process rather than edited directly.
What is the difference between a Scopus Author ID and a Scopus EID?
A Scopus Author ID identifies a person — it is purely numeric (for example 57194658000) and groups everything Scopus has matched to that author. A Scopus EID (Electronic ID) identifies one specific indexed document, in the format 2-s2.0- followed by digits (for example 2-s2.0-84881394200). A researcher has one Author ID (ideally) but one EID per indexed publication.
Does a duplicate or incomplete Scopus Author ID affect my h-index?
Yes. The document count and Scopus-derived h-index shown on a Scopus Author Details page are calculated from whatever publications are grouped under that particular Scopus Author ID, so output split across duplicate profiles won’t count toward one total until the profiles are merged.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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