Identifying the right Author in a sea of common last names

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned tips for author searching using truncation. But what do you do when the author has a common last name?

Here are a few things to try!

1. You know the author’s last name and an institutional affiliation

[Ovid] smith $.au. and yale.in.

[PubMed] smith *[au] AND yale[ad]

2. You know the author’s last name, an institutional affiliation and a potential department

[Ovid] smith $.au. and yale.in. and cell biology.in.

[PubMed] smith *[au] AND yale[ad] AND cell biology[ad]


** For both the above, once you’ve found an article by the RIGHT author, go back and do a targeted author search using the initial, initials, or initial truncated that you’ve identified. **

3. You KNOW the author’s full name but there are many authors with the same last name and the same initials.

This last thing to try is just for MEDLINE. It’s based on the Full Author field which was added to MEDLINE in 2002 so this works best if your author published after 2002


[Ovid] After trying any combination of the above and you’ve identified an article that you believe is the right one but want to verify. Click on the ‘Complete Reference’ link. Notice that right under the ‘Author’ field is the ‘Authors Full Name’ field. (if you still see initials in that field, I’ll bet the article was published before 2002)

Another trick for Ovid is to search the ‘Authors Full Name’ field first.
smith john.fa.
smith james $.fa. and yale.in.

[PubMed] After trying any combination of the above and you’ve identified an article that you believe is the right one but want to verify. Change the Display drop down from ‘Summary’ to MEDLINE and click on Display. Scan through the record until you come to the FAU and AU field tags and that’s where you’ll find the author information.

In PubMed the FAU field is a display only field. It is NOT searchable. Ovid has made the Full Author field searchable.

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au is the author tag
.au. is the syntax for field qualification in Ovid
[au] is the syntax for field qualification in PubMed
in is the institution or address field tag in Ovid
ad is the institution or address field tag in PubMed
fa is the full author field tag in Ovid
* is the truncation symbol in PubMed
$ is the truncation symbol in Ovid