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 the 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 on the default Search page.
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
- OGrady
- Van der Waals
- Ruiz-Gomez
- RuizGomez
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.
You may click Next to retrieve a list of all author names that match
your entry, or you may 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 product search, or you may select
another name from the list.
All of the other names 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 654, but the record count for Wilson DA*
is 674. In a search query, Wilson DA* will retrieve records containing the names:
- Wilson DA
- Wilson DAA
- Wilson DAB
- Wilson DAH
- and so on
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 Web of Science that contain the name. This total is the total for all years of Web
of Science, and not the years 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 Sciences.
The Record Count column shows the number of records assigned to each
subject category. This number may be higher than the actual number of records
containing the author name you selected. Subject categories in Author Finder are
very broad; one record may be counted more than once because it has been assigned
to multiple subcategories. For example, a record assigned to both Business and
Political Science will be counted twice as a Social Sciences record.
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 of the institutions in the Address field in records
for the author name you selected.
For example, if 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, you would select Univ Calgary from
the list.
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