Author disambiguation: Selective exclusion
Publish or Perish tutorial
If the list of results in Publish or Perish is fairly limited, the best way to disambiguate your publications from those of a namesake is selective exclusion.
Manual exclusion
You can manually exclude irrelevant publications from the analysis by checking or clearing the boxes in the Results list. Here are some shortcuts:
- The Check all button places check marks in all boxes;
- The Uncheck all button clears all boxes;
- When you use the keyboard to travel up and down in the Results list, pressing the space bar toggles the check mark on and off on the selected line.
Exclude a range of items
You can also select a consecutive range of items in the list (left-click on the first item, then hold either Shift key and left-click on the last item) and use the Check selection/Uncheck selection buttons to check/uncheck all selected items and recalculate the citation statistics.
Sorting by column helps with exclusions
Selecting relevant publications 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. Sorting by author is often a very effective way to exclude a range of publications in one go as one can easily identify authors with inappropriate initials or recognize irrelevant co-authors.
Changes in results list take effect immediately
In contrast to the refinements described in other tips, changes in the Results list take effect immediately and are reflected in the summary field. You do not have to resubmit your search.
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Copyright © 2020 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Tue 26 May 2020 13:53
Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London and visiting professor of International Management at Tilburg University. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.