The two surnames' nightmare on research

In Spain and most of Hispanic America we have two surnames, one from each parent. Mine are Jaspe and Villanueva, and in daily life only the first one gets used.

The problem is that research publishing was built around the Anglo way: one surname, and it goes at the end. So when a paper by Alberto Jaspe Villanueva enters a database, very often the parser takes Villanueva as the surname and Jaspe as a middle name, and files it under A. J. Villanueva. Other databases keep Jaspe Villanueva, others only Jaspe. Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, Scopus, dblp… each one does its own thing, and sometimes several things for the same person.

At the end you have your papers spread over two or three profiles, citations that don’t add up, and an h-index that depends on where you look. Not a big deal by itself, but we get evaluated with those numbers, for positions and for grants.

And we are not a few. Two surnames are the norm in Spain and in almost all of Spanish-speaking America (Argentina is the main exception), so around 480 million people. Portugal and Brazil also use two or more, the mother’s first, so all together we are more than 700 million, roughly one of every eleven humans (see Spanish naming customs and Portuguese names on Wikipedia).

I signed as Alberto Jaspe Villanueva for years, with the results above. Quite late I switched to Jaspe-Villanueva, with a hyphen, which is the usual advice, because then the parser sees one single surname. It helps, but only partially. Some indexers drop the hyphen, the old papers keep their old form, and every year I spend a few hours merging profiles and fixing records.

Two things I would tell a student starting now:

1. Decide how you will sign from the very first paper, and never change it. One surname is the easy option, especially if yours is rare. If you want both, use the hyphen from day one, and put exactly that form in your ORCID.
2. When you cite colleagues with two surnames, check how they write their names. The BibTeX you copy from a database spreads the wrong version, and every Villanueva, A. J. in a reference list is one more vote for the wrong name.