Author Finder helps you to find variants of the same author name or to distinguish one author from another by field of research and/or address.

Author names are in this form: last name followed by up to five initials.

You access Author Finder by clicking the Author Finder link that appears under the Author field.

Step 1: Enter Author Name

Enter the last name of the author in the Last Name box. A last name can contain a hyphen, a space, or an apostrophe. These are all valid entries:

• Wilson
• O'Grady
• Van der Waals
• Ruiz-Gomez

You must enter a full last name. A partial or truncated name will not match full names in Author Finder. For example, if you enter Rothsch or Rothsch*, you will not retrieve Rothschild.

Click Next to retrieve a list of all author names that match your entry or enter one or more initials. Keep in mind that the more initials you enter, the more restrictive your search.

Step 2: Select Author Variant

Scan the list of author names that match your entry in step 1. The exact name you entered is at the top of the list, and it is selected by default. You may click Next to use this author name in your database search, or you may select another name from the list.

All of the other names retrieved by your search are followed by an asterisk. The asterisk stands for any additional initials or no additional initials. Consider this example:

The record count for Wilson DA is 136, but the record count for Wilson DA* is 145. In a search query, Wilson DA* will retrieve records containing the names:

• Wilson DA
• Wilson DAB
• Wilson DAH
• Wilson DAJ
• Wilson DAV

This is why selecting Wilson DA* will increase your results. The other names on the list will focus your results, since they are narrower variants on the name Wilson DA.

Record Count is the total number of records in CC Connect that contain the name. This total is the total for all years of CC Connect, and not the timespan you selected at the start of your search.

Select an author name from the list, and then click Next, or click Add Another Name to look for more variants.

Step 3: Select Subject Category (optional)

To help narrow your author search, you may find it helpful to select a subject category. Six broad subject categories are available plus an All subjects category.

For example, to distinguish the social scientist Johnson RJ from other researchers named Johnson RJ, select Social & Behavioral Sciences.

Step 4: Select Institution (optional)

Another way to narrow your author search is to select one or more institutions. The institutions you see are all the institutions given in records for the author name you selected.

For example, if the author name you selected is Ziegler T, you would select Univ Calgary because you are interested in the work of the chemist Thomas Ziegler at the University of Calgary and not the work of Thomas Ziegler at Emory University or Thomas Ziegler at Princeton University.

About Author Names

Different authors may be represented by the same name in Current Contents Connect. For example, Richard J. Johnson and Robert J. Johnson may appear as Johnson RJ.

Search History

The results of your Author Finder search will appear as a set in your search history. You may combine this set with other sets to create new searches.