How do I refine Author search results?
Last updated on November 04, 2025
After you perform an initial Author search, a list of facets appears in the left pane of the Author search results. These facets include the categories ‘Source title,’ ‘City,’ ‘Country/Region,’ and ‘Affiliation.’
Note: Only authors of Compendex records are available via Author search. Your institution must be subscribed to the Compendex database and Author search must be enabled for your institution to access this feature.
A list of the most recurring terms in each facet displays in descending frequency order under each category label. For example, under ‘Affiliation,’ the list displays the institutions with the most published authors associated to them.
Select a topic below to find out more about how to refine the Author search results.
- Perform an Author search. The Author search results page opens.
- Go to the ‘Refine’ pane on the left side of the Author search results page.
- Each of the facets on the Author search results page displays a maximum of the top five results that are most relevant to your search.
- From a facet category, click the number displayed to the right of each item to see a revised Author search results set limited to the authors contained for this item.
- Within a facet category, click ‘View more’ to see additional items display in a pop-up window for the facet.
- Click ‘View less’ to reverse the display of items.
From one or more facets, select the checkbox(es) of items you want to use to refine your search.
- Click ‘Limit to’ to limit your results to only items you have selected.
- Click ‘Exclude’ to exclude items from your results that you have selected.
Your search is rerun, and the items you selected now appear in the refined search query string at the top of the ‘Author search results’ page.
- If desired, click the up arrow located to the right of the name of the facet (e.g., ‘Country/Region,’ ‘Affiliation,’ etc.) to close a facet or click the down arrow to open a facet.
- Click the up arrow to the right of the ‘By category’ label at the top of the ‘Refine’ pane to close all facets or click the down arrow to open all facets.
- Click the double arrows to the right of the ‘Refine’ label to close the pane and display only the ‘Author search results’ list.
- Click the double arrows again to reverse this display and open the ‘Refine’ pane.
You can rearrange the facet display order by clicking in them and dragging them to the desired location within the ‘Refine’ pane. This allows you to place the facets you use most often at the top of the pane. Your facets remain in the new order during your search session.
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