PubMed Update: Usability Improvement to Search Results Display for Citations with Lengthy Author Lists

PubMed has been updated to streamline the display of lengthy author lists in search results. When viewing search results in the Summary display format, author lists are now truncated after 1,200 characters followed by an ellipsis (…) and a link to "See abstract for full author list" (Figure 1). In practice, this change applies to citations with approximately 100 or more authors, or around .01% of citations in the PubMed database (Figure 2).

This change to the search results display is based on feedback submitted to the NLM Help Desk that citations with hundreds or thousands of authors affect the usability of the search results. Truncating these comparatively long author lists is intended to make the search results easier to navigate when using the Summary display format.

Figure 1: In PubMed search results, author lists are now (1) truncated after 1,200 characters followed by (2) a link to "See abstract for full author list."

Truncated author lists now appear in the Summary display format used for lists of citations on the PubMed website, e.g., in search results, Clipboard, and Similar Articles. There is no change to the mobile display, which already truncated author lists to conserve space on small screens. There are no changes to author lists in the cite, save, and email features in any format.

You can continue to view complete author lists for all citations on the Abstract page or using the Abstract display format for search results. If you would like to always display search results using Abstract format, please register for a free My NCBI account and follow the instructions for customizing the PubMed search results display.

Figure 2: Graph showing the number of authors per citation in PubMed through December 31, 2022. Around .01% of citations have more than 100 authors; these citations now have truncated author lists when using the Summary display format.

Please note that the policy related to author names in PubMed/MEDLINE has changed over time. See Number of Authors per MEDLINE®/PubMed® Citation for more information about the number of authors indexed on MEDLINE/PubMed citations over the years.