Playing the name game

Tonight, I bring you the tale of two papers. The first paper, Zr budgets for metamorphic reactions, and the formation of zircon from garnet breakdown, is by H. Degeling, S. Eggins, and D. J. Ellis. The second paper, In situ U–Pb dating of zircon formed from retrograde garnet breakdown during decompression in Rogaland, SW Norway, is by H. S. Tomkins, I. S. Williams, and D. J. Ellis. Aside from the third author (and really, who cares about third authors?), the subject matter, the methodology, the samples, and the overall geologic framework, these two papers have something else in common. Something rather important, that neither Web of Science nor Google Scholar can discern (I also tried Georef, but it crashed my work comp, and I don’t have a home subscription).

Both papers are written by the same first author, who for the purposes of this blog will referred to as either Dr. Tomkins, or Helen*. As you might be able to surmise from the publication dates, Helen got married in 2003 +/-2 AD (1 permil precision is good enough for geochronologists), and changed her name. But as far as the system is concerned, she is no longer the same person. And neither index seems to list both of her papers as being written by the same person. Why is this?

I offer three hypotheses:

1. Computers are stupid, and a single person with more than one name is more than they can handle.
2. Married women aren’t worth listing because...
2a. Once they’re hitched, women have no future in scientific research.
2b. Real, hard-core science chicks are all feminist zealots who would never consider a name change.
3. The scientific indices are run by a bunch of lazy dumbasses.

Test of hypothesis 1:
Go to imdb.com, a large on-line database. Search for “Jamie-Lynn Siegler”. Then try “Jamie-Lynn DaScala”. If television database is smart enough to recognize that both names refer to the actress who plays Tony’s daughter in The Sopranos, is it really too much to ask for a scientific database to display the same level of competence? After all, the Web of Science certainly charges more for subscriptions.

Test of Hypothesis 2:
Consider the career of Marie Sklodowska. Married at the age of 28, she took her husband’s name, and first published under it three years later, with “Rayons emis par les composes de l'uranium et du thorium”. Over the next 37 years, she added to her scientific credentials with
-The discovery of polonium and radium.
-The Nobel Prize for physics, in 1903
-The Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1903
-The Nobel Prize for chemistry, in 1911
All in all, Marie Curie didn’t do too badly.

Test of hypothesis 3:
The best way to test this is to see how long it takes the various indices to get their acts together.

Now, I’m a rogue, not a feminist, so I ain’t gonna campaign for any sort of systemic change. I will simply offer two bits of advice to Dr. Tomkins:
1. If future editors ask you for the name of a referee for future papers, why not suggest Dr. Degeling?
2. Make sure you reference her work many times, as the citation indices probably think you two are independent researchers.

* ‘cause that’s her name.