Use the Interfolio Data Service
What is the Interfolio Data Service (IDS)?
The Interfolio Data Service (IDS) helps keep faculty scholarly records up to date by automatically identifying and recommending publications for review in Faculty Activity Reporting (FAR). Throughout the year, IDS gathers bibliographic data about faculty scholarship (including books, book chapters, journal articles, and proceedings publications) from a broad network of authoritative external sources. These records are prepared and presented in FAR so they can be reviewed and either accepted or rejected by faculty members or their proxies. IDS is designed to support the review process by reducing manual data entry and helping ensure scholarly records are accurate, complete, and consistently formatted before they become part of a faculty member’s official FAR profile.
Looking for Step-by-Step Instructions?
Check out our article on how to Accept and Reject IDS Recommendations.
Note that the Web of Science by Clarivate currently cannot be connected with IDS, but can connect with FAR directly (existing functionality).
About IDS
Who is IDS for?
IDS supports multiple audiences, each interacting with the service in different ways:
- Faculty members and proxies: Review, edit, accept, or delete IDS‑matched scholarly activities in FAR.
- Administrators and support staff: Understand how IDS works, help faculty interpret results, and support troubleshooting or governance decisions.
IDS does not replace faculty review or institutional oversight. Instead, it assists by identifying potential matches and preparing them for validation.
What types of scholarly activity does IDS include?
IDS retrieves bibliographic data for the following publication types:
- Books
- Book chapters
- Journal articles
- Proceedings publications
Other activity types (such as grants, manuscripts in progress, encyclopedia entries, or unpublished works) are not currently supported and may need to be entered manually in FAR.
IDS does:
- Search external scholarly data sources for publications that may belong to faculty members
- Match publications to faculty using identifying information
- Prepare records so they can be reviewed and imported into FAR
- Present matched activities for review or automatic acceptance (if enabled by the institution)
IDS does not:
- Automatically add all publications to FAR without review
- Guarantee complete coverage of every discipline or publication
- Replace manual entry in cases where records are missing or time‑sensitive
- Evaluate the quality or impact of scholarly work
How IDS Works
How IDS identifies scholarly activity
IDS identifies scholarly activity by searching a wide range of trusted external sources for publications that may belong to faculty members. These sources include large‑scale scholarly data providers such as Scopus, OpenAlex, and Crossref.
At a high level, IDS follows this process:
- IDS receives faculty roster information from your institution.
- IDS begins by identifying faculty members using details stored in Faculty Activity Reporting (FAR), such as name, email address, and institutional affiliation. Where available, IDS also uses author identifiers (such as ORCID iDs and Scopus Author IDs) to help more accurately match publications to the correct individual.
- IDS searches connected external sources for publications that match those details.
- IDS compares results against existing FAR records to avoid recommending duplicates.
- IDS presents matched activities in FAR for review or automatic acceptance (if enabled by the institution).
Only records that are reviewed and accepted are added to FAR.
How IDS matches records to the correct faculty member
Before any publication appears for review, IDS works to match records to the correct individual, even when names are similar.
IDS uses a combination of identifying information, which may include:
- Faculty name and initials
- Institutional affiliation
- Email address (when available)
- Author identifiers such as ORCID iDs and Scopus Author IDs
- Publication identifiers such as DOIs
Providing more accurate and complete identifying information in FAR can help improve matching accuracy. Integration with individual ORCID accounts is also available through FAR and may further support disambiguation.
How IDS prepares records for review
Before matched records appear in FAR, IDS automatically prepares them so they can be reviewed and imported correctly.
This preparation includes:
- Formatting publication data to align with FAR requirements
- Matching records to the correct scholars (even with similar names) through disambiguation using data associated to the scholar (ORCiD or Scopus Author IDs) and the records (DOI) it is bringing in.
- Consolidating duplicate data by comparing fields like type, date, journal, title and authors with existing FAR records, giving equal weight to all fields.
- Standardizing common bibliographic fields (such as title, publication type, and dates)
- Ensuring required information is available for validation
This process helps reduce the amount of manual cleanup required during review.
How IDS handles duplicate records
IDS automatically attempts to prevent duplicate records from appearing in FAR by comparing incoming publications against existing FAR data. When comparing records, IDS evaluates multiple bibliographic fields (such as publication type, date, title, journal or publisher, and authors) giving equal weight to each field.
- If a record is determined to be sufficiently similar to an existing FAR record, it may not be shown as a recommendation.
- If required fields are missing or differences are significant, the record may be presented for review.
Deduplication does not apply to records that were manually entered into FAR or managed by Data Services.
Best Practice
Faculty should accept IDS recommendations before manually adding publications, as deduplication only occurs when IDS data is added to FAR first.
Auto-Accepted Records
Some institutions enable auto‑accept, which allows IDS to automatically accept and add high‑confidence records to FAR without requiring manual review. For more information on auto-accepting, check out our article About Auto-Accepting Records.
Troubleshooting and Support
If expected publications do not appear in IDS or if records seem incomplete, there are several common reasons related to name variations, affiliations, publication types, discipline coverage, or timing. For detailed guidance on diagnosing and resolving these issues, check out our article on IDS Troubleshooting.
FAQs
Where can I review and manage IDS records?
IDS‑matched records are reviewed and managed directly in FAR. To learn how to find matched activities, review individual records, use bulk accept and delete actions, edit required fields, and restore deleted records check out our article on how to Accept and Reject IDS Recommendations.
How does IDS determine whether a publication is a duplicate?
IDS automatically evaluates whether a publication recommendation is new or a duplicate before presenting it in FAR. This process (called deduplication) compares incoming records with existing FAR records using multiple bibliographic fields. IDS compares fields such as publication type, date information, journal or publisher, title, and authors. All compared fields are given equal weight during the evaluation.
Fields that may be included in this comparison can include:
- Publication type
- Date and year information
- Journal or publication venue
- Location, number, pages, and volume
- Publisher
- Title
- Author information
If one of the fields being compared contains an empty value, that field is ignored for the purposes of the comparison.
How match results are interpreted
Based on the overall comparison of available fields:
- If the total match percentage is less than 82%, the record is treated as a new item and is added to the review queue for validation.
- If the total match percentage is greater than 82%, the record is treated as a duplicate and is not shown as a recommendation.
Limitations and Behaviors
- Deduplication is case‑sensitive and does not remove extra whitespace. As a result, records with different capitalization or spacing may be treated as distinct.
- Deduplication applies only to records identified by IDS. It does not apply to records that are manually entered into FAR or managed by the Data Services team.
- IDS checks for duplicates during the IDS data refresh by comparing incoming records against the existing FAR database.
Deduplication only occurs when IDS‑identified data is added to FAR first. Faculty are encouraged to accept IDS recommendations before manually adding scholarly records, as records added to FAR after IDS runs will not be included in the deduplication process. If a publication does not appear as expected, this does not necessarily indicate an error. Check out our article on IDS Troubleshooting for guidance on common causes and next steps.
Will IDS regularly fetch and load my activity data into FAR?
Yes, IDS is refreshed regularly with current data for all faculty members in the service.
- Data is updated simultaneously for all clients on a recurring basis.
- After removing duplicates and verifying the data, IDS presents the data to faculty for validation through a workflow similar to the existing Activity Input Workflow in the FAR module.
- Once a faculty member or proxy validates the citation, it will appear in FAR.
Will IDS integrate with my on-campus system/sources?
Currently, IDS can only pull data from sources automatically connected to the Data Service. The Interfolio FAR module still offers all of the existing data input options.
For information about available integrations and supported systems, check out our Data Management help articles.