Author Search

The Beta Author Search feature is available to assist with finding articles by specific authors. Author’s names in IEEE Xplore have now been disambiguated making it easier to find articles written by an author under multiple formats of their name.

Now powered by an extensive database of newly linked and normalized names, the new IEEE Xplore Author Search delivers markedly improved search results. Select Author Search and type in an author name to retrieve a more complete and accurate result set for an author. The new Author Search provides greater precision for finding articles by specific authors than what is available in Advanced Search since you can now target a specific combination of first name and last name as opposed to searching in Advanced Search and limiting your search to an individual “Authors” field.

In addition, the recall has been improved since all variations of the author name are now combined into a single author record eliminating the need to perform multiple searches for the author’s name in various formats.

To perform an author search:

Click under the Global Search box.

IEEE Xplore displays the Author Search feature which will locate articles written by a particular author.

Author Search

Click in the text boxes provided and enter an author’s first name, middle name (or initial), and/or last name (or surname). The more information that is provided, the more precise the results will be. For example, if you are searching for an author Michael Jones, entering Michael in the first name field will retrieve more precise results than entering only the first initial M.

Click . IEEE Xplore looks through the citation records and presents a list of results whose authors include the name you specified. If you are logged in,the subscription identifier icon indicates articles where you have access to full text.

The author name searched on is displayed at the top of the search results page in the “You searched for” section. An “x” icon appears to the right of each field to allow for the removal of individual name fields. For example, if you would like to remove the search criteria for the first name “Michael” and search for all articles written by authors with the last name “Jones”, you can click on the “x” icon next to “First Name”:Michael.

To refine the list of results, use the Author facet on the search results page.

The search results page will display a listing of articles published by the author name specified. In the example above, search results will be returned for articles written by Michael Jones. The normalized format of the author name will be shown next to each search result in Last Name, First Initial format (for example: Jones, M.). The left side refinements (or "Filter These Results") section of the search results page includes the display name which is a a combination of the longest first name, last name and middle name available for each author. Although the normalized name format is shown for each article in the search results, articles for all variations of the name (Jones, M.; Jones, Mike; Jones, M. J.; etc.) are retrieved and combined into a single display name.

Try to be specific as possible when searching for an author to ensure precise results. Keep in mind, however, that even when precise matches are found, there may be cases where there will be more than one author with the same name in the search results set. In the event that this occurs, the authors’ names will be combined in the Author facet (along with the combined total of articles in the search result set for each author). You may be able to distinguish between authors of the same name by refining by secondary fields such as affiliation or publication title.

Note: IEEE authors may request an update to their display name by submitting a request to onlinesupport@ieee.org.

Some tips to keep in mind when searching by author name:

IEEE Xplore searches for items regardless of capitalization.
The asterisk (*) wildcard character can be used within the author search feature. For example, Al*n will retrieve results for Alan, Allen, etc. When using the asterisk wildcard within author search, it must be combined with at least three other characters. When known, it is preferred to enter the full name (rather than utilize the wildcard) to yield more precise results.
Search results containing the matching the search criteria will be highlighted in orange. Please note that only exact matches will be highlighted. For example, if you search for “Mike Jones”, and the display name is “Jones, M.”, “Jones” would appear highlighted, however “M.” would not (since the search was performed against the first name “Mike”). Also, there are certain exceptions for names containing special characters where the name does not appear highlighted.
The period is not required after initials as these will be replaced with a space upon running the search.
Articles included for citation download contain the author name in normalized format (last name, first initial.).
If there are more than one author with the same display name, the author name will be included only once as a refinement within the “Filter These Results” section. The article count listed in parenthesis will include a total number of records by each individual author.
Upon clicking on an author’s name from the search results (or from the abstract or table of contents pages), only exact matches for articles containing that particular author identity record will be retrieved. There may be exceptions where a particular author has multiple identity records which have not yet been disambiguated. When the search results are returned by clicking on that author name, all of the identity records may not be captured. If this is the case, you can enter a search for the author by entering the first name and last name into the author search to ensure full recall.