> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.impactu.colav.co/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Product authors

> How many authors each endpoint returns, in what order, how to tell whether the list is cut and where to get the full list.

Each product carries its author list in `authors`, in the order in which they sign the product, and the total in `authors_count`. Some products have thousands of authors. That is why, as [OpenAlex](https://help.openalex.org/data/authorships/) does, **lists return only the first 100**; the detail of a product returns all of them.

## How many authors each endpoint returns

| Endpoint | `view=full` | `view=summary` |
| - | - | - |
| Product lists: [Search products](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/search/works.md) and the products of an [affiliation](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/affiliation/get-research-products.md), an [author](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/person/get-research-products.md), a [source](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/source/get-products.md) or a [geographic entity](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/geo/get-geo-products.md) | First 100 | First 10 |
| [Get a product](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/work/get-work.md) and [Find a product by DOI](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/work/get-work-by-doi.md) | All | First 10 |
| [Product authors](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/work/get-work-authors.md) | All | All, with fewer fields per author |
| CSV and Excel exports of products | See [exports](#exports) | — |

The list limit also applies when fields are requested with `fields`.

Patents and projects don't have the 100 limit: their lists return all the authors, or the first 10 with `view=summary`.

## How to tell whether the list is cut

`authors_count` is always the real total number of authors of the product, in lists too. If it is greater than the number of items in `authors`, the list is cut. To show all the authors, use [Product authors](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/work/get-work-authors.md).

```json theme={null}
{
  "id": "6ab556bc5418a51e32602975",
  "authors_count": 5002,
  "authors": [
    { "id": "0000000001", "full_name": "María Ejemplo García" },
    "… 99 more authors, in signing order …"
  ]
}
```

To show the rest in an interface, subtract the authors you display from the total. For example, with two names: "María Ejemplo García, Juan Ejemplo Pérez and 5,000 more authors".

## Filters, sorting and counts

The cut is made last, after filtering, sorting and paginating. Filters, sorting and `meta.count` always take **all** the authors into account.

> [!WARNING]
>
> A product can appear among the products of an author or an affiliation even
> if that author is not among the first 100. In that case the author doesn't
> appear in the list's `authors`. Use [Product
> authors](https://help.impactu.colav.co/en/api-reference/work/get-work-authors.md) to see them.

## Exports

CSV and Excel exports of products (of an affiliation, an author or a source) apply their own rule. If a product has more than 50 authors, only the authors with a Scienti identifier, that is, those registered in Colombia, are taken into account. With 50 authors or fewer, all of them are taken into account.

The rule affects every column that comes from the authors: `authors`, `institutions`, `faculties`, `departments`, `groups`, `groups_ranking` and `countries`. In the `authors` column, names are in alphabetical order, not in signing order.

## Why

Only 0.2% of products have more than 100 authors, but those products hold more than half of all the author records in the database. The largest product has 5,002 authors: with all of them it weighs about 420 KB, and with the first 100, about 32 KB.

Cutting the lists reduces the size of the responses and the load on the server without removing products from the results. For example, the first page of 10 products of a large institution went from 4.4 MB to 1.5 MB.

> [!NOTE]
>
> Filtering with `authors_count=-100` is not equivalent: it excludes products
> with more than 100 authors from the results instead of cutting their list.


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