Open Databases of Canonical Humans and Affiliations used to support Project Chandra Bot
One challenge in assembling the data that powers Chandra Bot is that there is no canonical database of the humans that write and review papers. For example, during the course of his career, David Ory (sometimes David T. Ory or D. T. Ory) has been affiliated with Parsons Brinckerhoff (often referred to as PB), the University of California Davis (often referred to as UC Davis), the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (sometimes referred to as MTC), Sidewalk Labs, and WSP (which acquired Parsons Brickerhoff and, immediately following the acquisition, was briefly called WSP|PB). In order to connect the humans in our community across the papers they author and reviews they write, we need a database that connects canonical names and affiliations with aliases. There are numerous efforts in the academic community to uniquely identify people and measure -- quantitatively -- their contributions, including Google Scholar and ORCID. While these efforts are helpful in creating a canonical database for the members of the travel modeling community involved in TRB activities, they are insufficient. As a (hopefully) interim solution, we have created an open Google spreadsheet with our first pass at a canononical human database. It can be edited by anyone, including you. It includes names, affiliations, ORCID identifiers, and other (not private) information helpful in uniquely identifying members of our community.
Please raise an issue in this repository or send David Ory an email if you would like your name removed from this spreadsheet.
A Google Sheet containing canonical names and affiliations and can be accessed and edited here.