Last Author Added to PubMed's® "Sort by" Menu and Single Citation Matcher

[Editor's Note: This feature was implemented in PubMed on February 6, 2006.]

L ast author will soon be available as two new features:

• Sort by Menu Selection
• Single Citation Matcher Option

Last Author Sort by Selection

Sorting by last author has been added to the PubMed Sort by pull-down menu. The "Sort by" order has also been changed and the Pub Date sort selection now displays first (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Sort by pull-down menu.

Citations in PubMed are displayed in reverse Entrez date order. The Publication Date option sorts the most recently published citations first; the secondary sort is journal abbreviation. The First Author and Last Author options sort A to Z with citations having no authors (anonymous) at the end; the secondary sort is publication date.

Single Citation Matcher

The capability to search for last author has been added to the Single Citation Matcher as the check box , "Only as last author." Last author searching uses data from the Author field, so use the lastname + initial(s) format to enter a name, then click in the "Only as last author" check box (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Last Author search using Single Citation Matcher.

You may also search by last author directly in the PubMed search box by entering an author name followed by the last author search tag, [lastau] (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Last Author search for Varmus H.

The "Last Author" index is populated with the last author name from each PubMed citation. You may browse this index on the Preview/Index screen. Last author works with personal author names, not corporate author names.

Canese K. Last Author Added to PubMed's® "Sort by" Menu and Single Citation Matcher. NLM Tech Bull. 2006 Jan-Feb;(348):e5.