Resolve the citation to a deposited record using its DOI or title, copy the complete author list from that record, and cross-check it against the article landing page before finalizing the reference. The "et al." in your citation is a display convention, not a limit on the underlying metadata, so the full list usually exists in the record itself.
- Start with the DOI if you have one. A DOI lookup through the Crossref REST API returns the metadata deposited for that DOI, which includes the author information recorded for the work. If the DOI resolves to a record with a complete author list, copy the names in the order shown.
- Search by title when no DOI is available. Use a title search in a database that indexes the article. PubMed supports field tags, phrase searching, Advanced Search, and citation matching for locating biomedical records. Match the title, journal, and year together so you land on the intended article rather than a similarly titled one.
- Copy the complete author list from the deposited record. Take every author name as it appears in the record, including any names that appear after the point where your original citation stopped. Keep the order intact, since author order carries meaning in the reference.
- Cross-check against the article landing page. Open the publisher's page for the article and compare the author list there with the deposited record. If the two lists agree, use that list. If they differ, note which source supplied each version and resolve the discrepancy before submitting.
- Record your source. Add a short note to your working file stating whether the authors came from the DOI record, the database record, or the landing page. This note lets you or a co-author retrace the correction later.
- Format the corrected reference. Apply the citation style your target requires to the full author list. Citing Medicine provides structured examples and rules for citing journal articles and other publication types, which helps when the style guide's handling of long author lists is unclear.
A common failure mode is stopping at the first search result that matches the title loosely. Confirm the journal and year before copying names, because a preprint, correction, or related paper can share a similar title with a different author list.