Reconcile Funder Names Across Article Records

Trace the acknowledgement to an organization

Copy the funding statement from the article with its page or section location. Create separate fields for the organization name as printed, a standardized organization identifier, the award number, and the recipient when explicitly named. This separation lets an auditor distinguish a name-matching decision from an inference about a particular grant.

Look up the funder in the registry and compare the full name, language variants, and organizational context. Keep the identifier scheme with its value. Check the publisher metadata against the original acknowledgement, especially for acronyms shared by different organizations. A grant mentioned only in background material may belong to another project.

Reconcile a hypothetical portfolio

Eight articles contain 12 funding mentions. Five mention Agency A, four Agency B, and three Agency C. These sum to 12 mentions across three distinct organizations. If two Agency A mentions use different spellings of the same name, map both while preserving the original strings. The count of 12 does not establish that 12 different awards funded the work. Award-level deduplication requires award-level evidence.

Store unresolved names with a short reason and a candidate identifier where appropriate. Check analyses against their stated unit of counting, whether articles, mentions, organizations, or verified awards. A manuscript can then report exactly what its funding summary measures.

Crossref Open Funder Registry documentation

Related worksheet: Research decision log worksheet.

Source checked on 5 November 2026.