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Literature search: Author search

Overall guide for literature search

Author search

If several of your key articles are written by the same author, you could carry out an author search. You can search by author in almost all databases or search engines. Make sure you search for all name variants.

Search author field

In most academic literature databases you can search using the 'Author' field. You can search for surnames and combine them with initials and first names. Be aware that multiple authors can have the same surname, and even the same first name and initials. See the box 'Name variants'

Author identifiers

Some databases use 'author identifiers' to find publications of a specific author. This is very useful to avoid similar names of different authors.

ORCID is an universal author identifier

ResearcherID is an author identifier of Web of Science

 

Name variants

Searching with an author identifier is the best option, if  the author has an author ID and the database you are using facilitates searching for this identifier.

In other cases you will have to search for the author name. It is important to search with all the used name variants of an author.

Examples

Search author 'Theodore Michael Jones' (fictional)

Theodore Jones

Theodore M Jones

Theodore Michael Jones

T Jones

T M Jones

T Michael Jones

Be aware that authors can have name variants in common. In this case for example

'T Jones' can also be used for Tiffany Jones

Example: author search in Web of Science