I would like to write my initial first name in the title of my paper and i.e with this format "Initial (for first name) Middlename Surname". Is it appropriate to write the full first name in the biography section of the paper i.e Full (First name) Middlename Surname? Note that I would like to keep this consistent.
5
-
5It's not about "ethics", it's about allowing other people (and machines) to consistently identify you. If you present yourself with (even superficially) different names, people may (reasonably-enough) think that you are several different people, and so on. So, it's not ethics, it's practicalities. Especially over many different cultures, with many different traditions of names and such. There cannot be any sane "universal rule" (despite a general tendency to endorse north-western European name concepts), so think pragmatically.– paul garrettCommented Feb 21, 2018 at 0:23
-
Thanks for your response. The question has been edited accordingly, but I hope to fully understand what are the things involved from experience. I mean, google scholar for example would capture the first initial and middle name as well as the surname. I would like to fully comprehend this issue better and it would hopefully benefit others in the future.– AbdulhameedCommented Feb 21, 2018 at 0:58
-
Your impulse is entirely reasonable... and/but even the concepts of "first name, middle name, surname" are not universal. The question is, for the moment, how to squeeze reality into that fake citation system. I do not know what will happen. Perhaps the ORCHID or other author databases will help, though, still, with several of these, if we don't know the "authoritative" version, there's still confusion. Facetiously: maybe just get your own Unicode character for your name. Emojis get them, why not people? :) (Good luck with all such stuff...)– paul garrettCommented Feb 21, 2018 at 1:17
-
Names don't go in titles of papers, and what do you mean the "biography section"?– Azor Ahai -him-Commented Apr 14, 2021 at 0:48
-
See Using one's middle name in place of their first name in academia, especially Andreas Blass' answer.– Dave L RenfroCommented Apr 15 at 7:48
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
Yes, of course this is allowed. It's good to think a little bit about how you want to put your name on papers, before you publish your first one. Plenty of authors choose the method the OP describes, e.g., J. Peter May in math. I've seen dozens of people making this choice. In all of his papers, the name on top is J. Peter May.
The OP asks about the bibliography as well. Some journals insist on citations with only initials rather than names (other than surname) in the bibliography, in which case if I cite a paper by J. Peter May it gets mapped to J.P. May in the bibliography, and if I cite a paper of Mark A. Hovey, it gets mapped to M.A. Hovey. In other journals, that allow names to be spelled out, I'd cite these two authors as J. Peter May and Mark A. Hovey. It's no problem to have this inconsistency, because it reflects the wishes of the authors in how they write their names on papers.
All things being equal, it's better to pick one way of representing your name and stick with it throughout your career, e.g., if Mark A. Hovey switched to M. Allen Hovey in the middle of his career, this would cause some minor confusion. However, plenty of authors do change their name (e.g., if they get married, or change gender), and it's not the end of the world if you do. At such a moment, it's good to include a footnote mentioning that the author previously went by a different name, to help folks tracing the literature and trying to correctly cite your work.
