I can understand multiple individuals having same first AND last name but it is definitely a better way to search, in my experience, than last name ONLY or last name AND initial of the first name. I dont understand why certain journals make publications unsearchable when we use first AND last name of the author. It does not make any sense to me. Can someone explain to me the logic here pls.
Generally, NPG journal articles are searchable using first AND last author in pubmed, but Oncogene journal articles are not. It should not be difficult to adopt common practice at NPG to make sure all their articles show up when authors first AND last names are used in pubmed search.
On a broader note, is there any credible and practical solution being worked out to have unique identifiers for each researcher? I know NPG is trying out orchid but I dont know if is helpful on the ground of researchers.
Hi, Nagarajan, PubMed is probably the most user-friendly searching engine. But of course we have to follow some of the rules. So when we use a free-form text to search for a specific author, please place the last name first in the search line. It will be oversensitive to retrieve too many unrelated authors when one skip the middle name during the search. The most simple way and the most accurate way to retrieve an author's work is to just type in lastname+initials_of_first_and_middle_name; no space in between. For example, my full name is Victor C. Kok, just type in kok+vc that's all. As to the logics, I think it is because of the habitual way the librarian archive an author.
PubMed is more useful search as it is mentioned by Victor C. Kok, a nd also it varies from journal to journal. for example some of my publications all my initials was accepted(SVSG) but some it was not accepted so h i had used only one initial for those publications.one of the disadvantage for this is they think that they are different authors.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Journal Articles