As a researcher, you want to become known as an expert in your field. You need peo­ple to rec­og­nize your name and asso­ciate it with your research. Con­se­quently, it is impor­tant to be con­sis­tent in the name you use on publications.

For exam­ple, I could write under “R Hyn­d­man”, “R J Hyn­d­man”, “Rob Hyn­d­man”, “Rob J Hyn­d­man”, etc. I’ve cho­sen the last of these and I try to use it on all pub­li­ca­tions. Unfor­tu­nately, some jour­nals insist on only ini­tials, in which case I become “R J Hyn­d­man”. In other cases, a coau­thor han­dles all the cor­re­spon­dence with the jour­nal and, despite my requests, they just list me as “R Hyn­d­man” or “Rob Hyn­d­man”. So I have not achieved con­sis­tency, but I try. Researchers from coun­tries with more elab­o­rate nam­ing con­ven­tions than the West­ern tra­di­tion will have even more options, and so it is even more impor­tant to aim for con­sis­tency in publications.

Con­sis­tency is also impor­tant when oth­ers are search­ing for one of your papers. If you have changed your name, or you use two very dif­fer­ent names, then it will be harder for other researchers to find the paper of yours that they are look­ing for. This can be a prob­lem when peo­ple have changed their name at mar­riage, for exam­ple. It may be bet­ter to keep your “aca­d­e­mic name” the same, even if the name you use else­where is changed.

Hav­ing an uncom­mon sur­name makes it eas­ier — there are no other Hyn­d­mans work­ing in sta­tis­tics or fore­cast­ing (although there are sev­eral work­ing in math­e­mat­ics). If you have a com­mon name, try being dis­tinc­tive by con­sis­tently using other ini­tials.

Related Posts:

• Researcher por­tals
• Should you make your work­ing papers public?
• How to avoid annoy­ing a referee
• Sight what you cite
• The falling stan­dard of Eng­lish in research