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The effectiveness of the analytical tools used for the evaluation of scientific activity has been enhanced by the availability of bibliographic databases, in particular the standard-selling Institute for Scientific Information databases, whose operating rules are widely accepted by the scientific community. One of these rules is the availability in a single field of the institutional affiliations of all the authors of a paper. In practice this rule has been replaced by another, resulting from the inclusion of a new option, whereby records can be retrieved by the author's reprint address (Reprint Address field). The outcome is diversity in the information on affiliation that may generate some degree of uncertainty in connection with institutional attribution when discrepancies arise between the information contained in the two fields, mainly when the only option available is the reprint address. The present study found a high degree of uncertainty, however, essentially for the period prior to Web of Science, in particular for scientific evaluation in peripheral countries such as Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]