1. A method, executed by a computing system, for assigning publications to authors, the method comprising: for each of a plurality of publications, generating an author-name-mention data structure for each author name listed on the publication, the author-name-mention data structure comprising at least an identifier of the publication and the listed author name; automatically clustering the author-name-mention data structures to form a plurality of clusters each representing a disambiguated cluster author and containing one or more publications within the cluster; automatically identifying, among the plurality of clusters and a plurality of author identities uniquely representing individuals within the computing system, pairs of a cluster and an author identity name-compatible with the disambiguated cluster author of the cluster; for at least one of the pairs of a cluster and a name-compatible author identity, detecting at least one publication within the cluster that is at least one of co-authored by, or cited in a publication authored or co-authored by, a social contact of the individual represented by the name-compatible author identity, and assigning the cluster to the name-compatible author identity based at least in part on the detecting.