Merging Person Records

If a person has two separate records, you merge the record to remove into the record to keep. All publication links of the removed record move to the record that is kept. A merge cannot be undone.

Opening the merge window

You open the window from these places:

• The Merge with another person button on the person's page.
• Merge with another person in the person's row menu in the People list.
• The merge buttons on the Duplicates tab.
• The Merge button on the Possible duplicates card of the person's page.

Steps

1. On the person's page, press Merge with another person. This person comes in as the Profile to remove (source).
2. In the Search the target person field of the Profile to keep (target) card, type the name or ORCID iD of the person to keep.
3. Select the person to keep from the list.
4. If the source and the target are the wrong way round, press Swap direction between the two cards.
5. If you want, type the reason for the merge in the Reason field.
6. Press Merge.

The notification says how many contributions were moved and how many publications were updated. If you started the merge from a person's page, the page of the person you kept opens.

Results of the merge

• The publication contributions of the removed record move to the record that is kept. If the kept person already appears on the same publication with the same role, the duplicate contribution is deleted. Its corresponding author mark, institutions and contribution roles are added to the remaining contribution.
• If a user account's profile or author rows of submissions point to the removed record, they point to the kept record afterwards.
• The institution links of the removed record that the kept record does not have are added.
• The ORCID iD, the user account link, the bio, the web page and the e-mail are taken from the removed record if they are empty in the kept record.
• The old addresses of the removed record on the public site redirect to the page of the kept person.
• The duplicate match between the two people is closed. The other matches of the removed person leave the queue too.
• The action is written to the audit log with its reason.

If two people try to merge the same pair in opposite directions at the same time, the second action waits for the first one to finish and stops with the warning "This person was merged into another record; a merged record cannot be restored."

Records that cannot be merged

• Two people with different ORCID iDs cannot be merged.
• Two people linked to different user accounts cannot be merged.
• A record that was merged before cannot be merged again.
• A deleted person cannot be merged. Restore the person first with Restore.

How to solve these cases is explained in Person records cannot be merged. Merging needs a separate permission. The Production coordinator role edits person records but cannot merge them.