## 1 Introduction: Name Disambiguation and Collocation
### The value of name disambiguation  
The greatest value that effective name disambiguation brings to searching is increased search precision. Greater precision in a name search means that more of the results will be about the individual named in the search and not about others who happen to have the same name. Effective name disambiguation saves the time of searchers; it frees them from having to look at each item in the search results to determine whether the item is indeed about or by the person they entered in the search box.  
[PERSON] and [PERSON] list several advantages of name disambiguation in the context of scholarly communication. They describe being able to find a potential research collaborator to tap unpublished information the researcher may have. That is to say, starting with an article or citation, a user, with effective name disambiguation in place, is better able to find the precise individual named in the citation. Additionally, they point out that \"Journal editors could assign papers for review more readily by knowing the characteristic publication profile of its reviewers, and conference organizers would similarly benefit from knowing the publication profile of prospective invitees\" [4].  
Effective name disambiguation also plays an important role in assessment of scholarly activity, such as that assessment carried out by promotion and tenure committees. Such committees might perform two types of search for a tenure candidate, a search of the candidate's works, and a search of works that have cited the candidate's research. The first type of search is normally done in an abstracting and indexing database, and the second is done in a citation index. If the candidate happens to have a common name, accurately gathering this information may be difficult or impossible. Ongoing name disambiguation of an individual also enables following the person's career over time. Ideally, a single search would retrieve all of an individual's publications (excluding those for which the individual had no role) over the course of the individual's career. Granting agencies want to follow up on the work of their grantees (or applicants for grants), and if these people have common names, it may be difficult to track their publications or other work. Effective name disambiguation would greatly increase this task's precision. [PERSON] and [PERSON] summarize the value of accurate name retrieval in scholarly communication:  
Accurate assessment of scholarly output is important for individual researchers, their institutes, and funding agencies. Tenure, funding, collaboration and recognition often rely on this link. With accurate identification of an individual researcher's output, individual citation metrics become more valid and reliable than the much condemned impact factors for journals [6].  
Scholarly publishing houses also would benefit from effective name disambiguation. A working system, such as one that assigns a unique number to each scholar, would facilitate their work. Such a system would make manuscript processing quicker, would help find the best reviewers (and help prevent conflicts of interest by revealing past collaborations), would help with royalty payments, and would give publishers' marking departments a more complete record of the author they are assigned to promote [1].  
Other domains in addition to scholarly communication benefit from effective name disambiguation. One area is genealogy, where genealogical research is greatly facilitated when ambiguous names are effectively discriminated. Often, the addition of birth and death dates to names in genealogical databases is sufficient to provide the needed uniqueness to personal names.