Advanced Search feature request - search for 1st author only

james.k.russell · February 1, 2024

Often I want to find what I have about a particular article, known to me primarily by the first author and publication date. When I use Advanced Search I can use it by Title, Creator, Year, by All Fields and Tags, or by Everything. Each of these is useful at times. However, it would help if I could use First Author, to reduce the plethora of returns particularly when working on articles from very collaborative authors.

tim820 · February 2, 2024

This plugin for Zotero 7 (not compatible with the current Zotero 6) adds First Author and the equally important (in many disciplines) Last Author to the main pane column choices. Which you can then sort on to find the one you want. It can also add a column with a list of all authors.
https://github.com/github-young/zotero-better-authors

The addition of a last author column addition was listed by Zotero as an issue in 2019 (maybe first author has been listed for addition too ?).
https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/1757

First and last author do also really need to be available in quick and Advanced Search. For example in pubmed search they are achieved with authorname[1au] and authorname[lastau] respectively.

dstillman · February 8, 2024

@james.k.russell: You've requested this before — no need for a new thread.

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/454799/#Comment_454799