Accuracy of simple, initials-based methods for author name disambiguation

There are a number of solutions that perform unsupervised name disambiguation based on the similarity of bibliographic records or common co-authorship patterns. Whether the use of these advanced methods, which are often difficult to implement, is warranted depends on whether the accuracy of the most basic disambiguation methods, which only use the author's last name and initials, is sufficient for a particular purpose. We derive realistic estimates for the accuracy of simple, initials-based methods using simulated bibliographic datasets in which the true identities of authors are known. Based on the simulations in five diverse disciplines we find that the first initial method already correctly identifies 97% of authors. An alternative simple method, which takes all initials into account, is typically two times less accurate, except in certain datasets that can be identified by applying a simple criterion. Finally, we introduce a new name-based method that combines the features of first initial and all initials methods by implicitly taking into account the last name frequency and the size of the dataset. This hybrid method reduces the fraction of incorrectly identified authors by 10-30% over the first initial method. For a significant fraction of studies that are based on bibliometric data, as well as for purposes of research evaluation, it is essential to be able to attribute specific bibliographic records to individual researchers. A practical problem with this straightforward step is that there is a certain level of ambiguity in this process, which is known as the author name disambiguation problem. The problem manifests itself in two ways: a given individual may be identified as two or more authors (splitting), or, two or more individuals may be identified as a single author (merging). Here we use the term individual to refer to an actual person, and an author to refer to an entity that results from the author disambiguation procedure. Both the splitting and the merging can happen as the result of the same disambiguation method. The problem of author disambiguation fundamentally arises because personal names are not sufficiently distinct considering the large number of researchers active in most disciplines today. It is further exacerbated by the inconsistent way in which author names are reported in publications. The