Wordpress Query, check a value against multiple keys - wordpress

Question

My Wordpress setup has a Publication custom post type and has 10 custom fields each corresponding to an author who may have contributed to that publication. Every post can have different authors in those fields or the same authors but in a different order. I am using Wordpress's WP_Query to search for posts matching my criteria. I need to check a single author name against all the custom fields to see if it matches any one of them. I tried doing this with the below code but it produces no result. Any help would be appreciated!
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'publication',
'post_status' => 'publish',
'meta_query' => array(
'relation' => 'AND',
array(
'key' => 'year_published',
'value' => $selected_pub_year,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => array(
'author_0_name',
'author_1_name',
'author_2_name',
'author_3_name',
'author_4_name',
'author_5_name',
'author_6_name',
'author_7_name',
'author_8_name',
'author_9_name',
),
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
),
);
// The above meta-query may be modified through the use of this:
// echo "<pre>".print_r($args[meta_query][relation])."</pre>";
// The Query
$the_query = new WP_Query($args);

Answer 1

I have added OR relation for post author query,Try to change your argument array as follow,
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'publication',
'post_status' => 'publish',
'meta_query' => array(
'relation' => 'AND',
array(
'key' => 'year_published',
'value' => $selected_pub_year,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'relation' => 'OR',
array(
'key' => 'author_0_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => 'author_1_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => 'author_2_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => 'author_3_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => 'author_4_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => 'author_5_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => 'author_6_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => 'author_7_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => 'author_8_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
array(
'key' => 'author_9_name',
'value' => $selected_pub_author,
'compare' => '=',
),
),
),
);
$the_query = new WP_Query( $args );