Disambiguating academic institution names: a comprehensive study of authority files, linguistic variations, and computational evaluation in PubMed affiliations

Accurate representation of academic institution names is critical for bibliometric analysis, scholarly communication, and digital library systems. However, variations in naming conventions, institutional hierarchies, and multilingual expressions pose significant challenges for consistent affiliation metadata. This dissertation shows a comprehensive investigation into Institution Name Disambiguation (IND), with a focus on authority files, linguistic analysis, and empirical evaluation using PubMed affiliation data. First, the study reviews the conceptual foundations of institutional name ambiguity and examines 21 prominent authority files, including VIAF, ROR, and Wikidata. A new integrated authority dataset is developed to enhance institutional name standardization. Second, we create a manually annotated dataset from real-world PubMed affiliation records to capture synonym patterns, structural inconsistencies, and user-written variations. Third, the dissertation evaluates both coverage of the authority files and the performance of computational tools for institutional name recognition and disambiguation across multiple metrics. Key contributions include a structured evaluation of authority file quality, benchmark datasets for institutional name analysis, InsVar and AffiNorm, and experimental insights into best practices for combining authority control with computational methods. The findings have broad implications for improving data integrity in academic publishing, digital knowledge infrastructures, and citation indexing systems.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Information Sciences

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Guan, Yingjun

Contributors dc:contributor

• Torvik, Vetle I.
• Torvik, Vetle I
• Downie, Stephen
• Ludäscher, Bertram
• Renear, Allen

• Natural Language Processing
• Institution Name Disambiguation
• Data Mining
• Text Mining
• Authority Control.

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Yingjun Guan

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130147

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F130147