A 2-minute introduction to PoP Author Search

Using Search terms effectively

  1. Always use "quotes" around the author’s name, e.g. "A Harzing".
  2. PoP is not case dependent, "A HARZING" gives the same result as "a harzing"
  3. The order of search terms does not matter. "A Harzing" will give the same result as "Harzing A".
  4. Use an author’s initials rather than their full given name as not all journals publish author names in full.
  5. If an author has consistently published with only one initial, you can exclude namesakes using 2nd and 3rd initials by using wildcards in the "exclude these names" field, e.g. when searching for "G Sewell", you can exclude "G* Sewell" "G** Sewell".
  6. You cannot use "*G Sewell" to exclude "WG Sewell" or "AG Sewell". You need to manually exclude these authors by listing them in the "exclude these names" field.
  7. If an author has published under two different names (e.g. maiden name and married name) use OR between search terms for a combined search.
  8. If an author has mostly published with two initials, but has incidental publications with one initial, a combined search with initials and full given name (e.g. "CT Kulik" OR "Carol Kulik") will usually capture all of their publications.

Limiting year

  1. Before limiting the year range, always check whether an author has highly cited publications without a year listing.

(De)Selecting and merging results

  1. You can deselect publications not published by the target author. Simply remove the tick mark in the first column by clicking on it.
  2. You can (de)select more than one publication at once by first selecting the relevant publications and then clicking the "(un)check selection" button.
  3. If the results contain duplicate entries, you can merge them by dragging and dropping the duplicate entries onto the master record.
  4. Selecting relevant publications for unchecking or merging can be made easier by first sorting the results by Cites, Authors, Title, Year, Publication, or Publisher. Sorting is done simply by clicking on the corresponding column heading. Click twice to reverse the sort order.