Trying to produce a list of all of your papers (or worse, somebody else's) in SPIRES/INSPIRE
without any "false positives" is difficult because, often times, names are not unique. For example, the SPIRES/INSPIRE search:
find author j smith
To negate "false positives" SPIRES/INSPIRE has instituted a unique author INSPIRE ID number. This INSPIRE ID Number replaces potentially ambiguous name searching with precise ID number searching. INSPIRE ID Numbers will also allow for the possibility of finding all the papers that cite your papers within a single search. Once we have a significant number of IDs, the search functionality will be available on INSPIRE.
SPIRES/INSPIRE will also be sharing this author ID system with arXiV, publishers and other database services, potentially through the ORCID Initiative. Getting your identity right in SPIRES/INSPIRE means you don't have to worry about it anywhere else.
We will be working on assigning INSPIRE ID Numbers to all author entries in the HEP database through an author-matching algorithm.
However, maintaining this level of quality control in the database can only work with help from the community. To get started, please see the instructions below.
Collaborations with > 10 authors
SPIRES/INSPIRE strongly encourages collaborations to use our authors.xml file schema which incorporates INSPIRE ID Numbers in one, complete author list. The list can be implemented by the maintainer of the author list within each collaboration.
Theorists and papers with < 10 authors
Small collaborations and theorists do not need to use authors.xml. Our automated process should attribute your papers correctly without any additional effort from you. To double-check our work, and to solve any remaining ambiguities, you will soon be able to claim your papers.
In practice, you should never need to know your ID number. INSPIRE will allow you to find papers based on author names and linking from other papers and/or HEPNames records. We will either determine the ID from you papers automatically, or your collaboration will take care of it for you. However, should you wish to know, you can look up your ID.
An INSPIRE ID Number consists of eight randomly-assigned digits.
Example: INSPIRE-09984261
To find your INSPIRE ID Number, visit SPIRES/INSPIRE HEPNames.
The INSPIRE ID Number is located at the bottom of an author's record.
EXAMPLE: "Find name Beacom, John" will produce this result:
Beacom, John Francis (Ohio State U.)
Ph.D. advisor: Balantekin, Akif Baha
Ph.D. institution: Wisconsin U., Madison (1997)
Undergrad: Kansas U.
Field: astro-ph, hep-ph, nucl-th
Date verified 03/03/10
Author ID number: INSPIRE-00065293 <− LOCATION OF INSPIRE ID NUMBER
If you do not have an INSPIRE ID Number please use the 
key on your author's record page and a number will be assigned upon update of the record.
If you do not have a record in HEPNAMES, use the Additions feature in HEPNAMES. An INSPIRE ID Number will be assigned automatically when the record is added.
We welcome comments and suggestions! Please contact us at hepnames@slac.stanford.edu
ORCID Initiative
INSPIRE
SPIRES
HEPNames
Last Updated: July 12th 2010