The system works pretty well. It uses ORCId and the arXiv identifiers as sources of truth and supplements some information from Google Scholar. Unfortunately, when applying this tool we have found two problems:

• ORCId and arXiv webpages are often not maintained by their owners.
• Some scientists don’t know they even exist.
• Some publishers corrupt some DOI records with crap.

The last problem I still have not found a solution for. I am working with Claude on understanding how publishers dare to introduce MathML or MathJAX in titles and how to fix it, but hey, that’s a weekend project.

The first two problems, on the other hand, prompted me to write this little guide explaining what ORCId and arXiv identifiers are and trying to help my colleagues find ways to keep them more up to date.

arXiv identifiers

I think all scientists know what the arXiv is, so I will not explain it. However, not all scientists seem to know or understand what arXiv identifiers are, so here it goes a brief summary.

The arXiv is a huge repository of preprints and a wonderful resource to make your research accessible to the overall public. However, in such a big database there are bound to be collisions: two or more scientists with the same name, such that searching papers with those names returns mixed results.

The arXiv id solves this by creating a dedicated webpage only for your preprints. However, for this webpage to be populated, you must explicitly claim ownership of the preprints that really belong to you. Otherwise the arXiv would not be able to tell which manuscripts are yours and which belong to a similarly named researcher.

The thing is that this identification happens automatically when you submit a manuscript to the repository, because the software knows it was you who did it. But when you work with other colleagues in a shared publication, you need to claim ownership of the preprint in one of two ways:

You can ask your coworkers for the password they received when the manuscript was approved and then go to the manuscript claim form and enter the code of the manuscript plus the password to declare the manuscript is yours, as shown in the capture below

Alternatively, for manuscripts that are very old or whose password has been lost in the unending folders from a university’s webmail, you can collectively claim ownership of manuscripts based on their arXiv code. This is a labor intensive process where someone must verify your claims and it is not the recommended way.

For this list to be maximally useful, you also should make sure that your preprints are associated to published works once the referral process is complete. You do this by updating the information from your manuscripts, associating at least the publication DOI’s code, but ideally also the complete reference.

Once you do this, the association between both items (pre-print and final publication) helps software that can offer your preprint’s PDFs for publications that sit behind paywalls. It also helps software such as our group’s bot or Google Scholar to find out that the preprint and the publication belong together and they should be listed as only one item.

ORCId

The other and more official authoritative resource of information about you and your research is the ORCId webpage. This is a different beast that includes way more information than just papers: it lists previous and current positions, funding information, education, peer review activity, etc.

There is no workaround to entering most of the information yourself. ORCId cannot really know about your employers nor where you got your degrees, but there are two things that can be more or less automated.

When you publish a manuscript, most journals nowadays ask for your ORCId and ask you to confirm that you authorize to enter information on your behalf. This creates an authorization chain like the one you see below, that may be either directly with the journal or with Crossref, the scholarly record that brought us DOIs.

Once this link is granted, Crossref will keep your publication database up to date with papers where you are listed as an author for the journals you have authorized.

Notice however that this job can also be done by other institutions. In this case, my employer also takes care of updating my publication record. It does so because I entered the ORCId authorization in my personal profile (Intranet – Aplicaciones Corporativas – Información Personal – Mi Perfil), enabling my employer to associate publications that it identifes as mine (and theirs) and keeping that information up to date.

This is extremely convenient too, because it goes beyond authorizing every single journal, enabling also the inclusion of documents that are not official publications, such as institutional preprints, reports, etc., all of which have DOIs of their own.

Conclusions

I hope this information was useful for our group’s members and perhaps for other people too. We live in a new era where scientific information is both more open and more traceable than ever. This is fantastic but requires a bit of maintenance and care on your side. As someone said, help us help you.

F.A.Q.

Why not use Google Scholar?

Google Scholar is a proprietary software that is neither designed to be scraped nor used as reference database. Furthermore, information stored in Google Scholar may be unilaterally changed by system without your intevention. This causes many Scholar profiles to get rot, including publications that do not belong to the users, or records (e.g. talks in conferences, webpages, PDFs from slides) that really are not comparable to peer-reviewed publications.

Why does my publication record look ugly?

As I have said above, while there are standars for publishing DOI records using XML and CL+JSON formats, some publishers take liberties such as including equations in strange unparseable formats (e.g. MathML). We have yet to upgrade our bot to handle those corner cases.

If I supply ORCId’s to publishers, does it mean I don’t have to maintain my page?

Unfortunately, not. We have colleagues whose ORCId remained empty despite having provided this information to all publishers. One clue for you would be to verify that the journals and Crossref are linked to your ORCId account. If this is not the case, contact those publishers directly. We cannot really help you on this front.

Will you release the software for scraping publications?

Maybe, eventually. It is part currently of a scientific WordPress framework we developed for this group and which we’re trying to make more general. Whether it makes sense to refactor just the publications’ component is something we need to think about.

Interested candidates can send their CV’s to a.gonzalez.tudela@csic.es, with the subject “Post-doc position”. Optionally, they can ask up to two colleagues to send recommendation letters to the same e-mail and with the same subject.

Applications will be considered as they are received, until 31st December 2025. Early applications are encouraged, although the starting date is flexible in the year 2026.

Contact the PI for questions or more information.

Non-linear parametric resonator arrays and spectroscopy of strongly coupled cavity-QED materials

• PIs: Álvaro Gómez-León (a.gomez.leon@csic.es) and Tomás Ramos (tomas.ramos@csic.es)
• For full information on the job offer, project description, and application process, please visit this link.

Applications will be considered as they are received, until 12 December 2025. Early applications are encouraged, although the starting date is flexible.

UPDATE: OFFER CLOSED

The search is restricted to students fulfilling the criteria of the call (European citizens with certification of at least 300 ECTS, or students from outside the European Union with the Spanish equivalent of 300 ECTS).

The two PhD projects are:

Out-of-Equilibrium Quantum Dynamics with Tensor Networks

• Supervised by Luca Tagliacozzo (luca.tagliacozzo@iff.csic.es) and Esperanza López esperanza.lopez@csic.es.
• Full information on the PhD project here.

Topology and strong interactions in non-equilibrium quantum simulators

• Supervised by Diego Porras (diego.porras@csic.es)
• Full information on the PhD project here.

Contact the supervisors for questions or more information!

• Plazo de solicitud abierto del 1 al 30 de septiembre 2025.
• 3 meses de duración, fechas a concretar con los investigadores durante 2026.
• 20 horas semanales, 600 €/mes.
• Dirigidas a estudiantes universitarios (grado o máster en Ciencias o Ingeniería Física).
• Cuatro becas en el campo de las tecnologías cuánticas en nuestro grupo:
  • Tecnologías Cuánticas Fotónicas para la Integración Óptico-THz (IFF03), Carlos Sánchez Muñoz c.sanchez.munoz@csic.es
  • Sensores cuánticos topológicos (IFF-04), Diego Porras Torre, diego.porras@csic.es
  • Quantum Simulation with Digitized Superconducting Computers (IFF-05), Alan Costa Dos Santos, ac_santos@iff.csic.es
  • Simuladores cuánticos programables (IFF-06), Alejandro González Tudela, a.gonzalez.tudela@csic.es

Toda la información y documentación de la convocatoria se encuentra disponible en:

https://sede.csic.gob.es/tramites/programa-jae/convocatoria-jae-intro-icu-2025

que incluye los Planes de Formación de las ofertas e instrucciones para la solicitud. No dudéis en contactar a los supervisores para más información sobre cada proyecto ofertado, o info.iff@csic.es sobre el proceso de solicitud.

The student will be strongly encouraged to collaborate with experimental research groups. Candidates should demonstrate communication skills and a collaborative mindset, working effectively with researchers from diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds, as well as with colleagues of varying gender identities.

Position Benefits:
Additional funding to attend leading conferences in quantum information science.
Potential (subject to confirmation) for participation in scientific missions to research groups in countries such as China, the UK, Denmark, Brazil, and other EU nations.
A highly collaborative and motivating working environment at QUINFOG-CSIC.
Further benefits will be discussed during the interview process.

Candidates may email ac_santos@iff.csic.es to apply or request additional information. To apply, the candidate should include:

1. CV (highlighting programming skills).
2. Undergraduate and master’s academic records.
3. If available, a link to the master’s thesis.
4. Email contact for at least one referee (more than one is preferred) who can provide a recommendation letter.

Use the subject line: “Application: PhD Position – [Your Name]” when submitting your application.
We encourage applicants of all nationalities, genders, cultures, and religions to apply.

Important Dates:
Application deadline: February 15th, 2025

Further details on research interests can be found in the list of arXiv open-access papers available on Dr. Santos’ Google Scholar profile.

Where? Sala de Conferencias CFMAC, C/ Serrano 121

Program:

The master is organized as a series of core lectures with optional components and covers all pillars of quantum technologies, from quantum computing and quantum algorithms, to quantum sensing and metrology.

Quinfog’s members lead the organization of three courses:

• Superconducting Quantum Circuits (3 ECTS)
• Quantum Nanophotonics (3 ECTS)
• Quantum Technologies with Photons and Atomos (3 ECTS)

The admission period for this master closes in May 30th. The webpage for application is open here.

Photography by Nathan Dumlao in Unsplash

The results contained in “Converting long-range entanglement into mixture: Tensor-network
approach to local equilibration” published on the 07/03/2024 in PRL bring us closer to simulating quantum-many-body systems out of equilibrium. Life is an out-of-equilibrium process, it starts with our birth, we grow, we interact with our society that changes us and that we change and ultimately, we die. Everyone can understand this. Unfortunately the quantum life of a single spin, immersed in the large world of a quantum many-body system is much more complicated. In principle our physical laws allow the spin to go back to where it has started from at any time. In practice, from the interaction with the quantum many-body system it slowly irreversibly ages, like us and ultimately relaxes into the equilibrium equivalent of our death. This fact has defeated our understanding, due to the exponential increase in computational resources necessary to describe the dynamics of the spin with the number of spins in the many body systems and the duration of their mutual interactions.

A new algorithm developed by researchers from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics has paved the way for shading light on the life of single quantum constituent, by showing how to predict the local properties of a quantum system in 1D over extended times after it is quenched out of equilibrium.

This paves the way to addressing important open theoretical questions, such as the origin of the arrow of time, in quantum mechanics but also to better design technological applications based on quantum processes. For instance, the algorithm could be used to assist in designing processes that help protect specific properties of quantum systems, such e.g. their coherence over a long time.

The algorithm leverages the inherent relaxation process of quantum systems, gradually simplifying the complex quantum states generated during the system’s evolution into simpler environments. These simplified environments, while not fully capturing the quantum behavior, emulate the effect of the real quantum system on the desired spin while providing a manageable description of its environment in real time.

In summary, the innovative approach represents a critical step forward in our understanding and description of quantum phenomena.

The full article is available at the Physical Review Letter website and is open-access,

“Converting Long-Range Entanglement into Mixture: Tensor-Network Approach to Local Equilibration”
Miguel Frías-Pérez, Luca Tagliacozzo, and Mari Carmen Bañuls
Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 100402 – Published 7 March 2024

Marie Carmen Bañuls has led the MPQ group participating in this collaboration while Luca Tagliacozzo has been working from Quinfog