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Google Scholar Citation Profiles - The Good The Bad and The Better
Google Scholar Citation Profiles - The Good The Bad and The Better
Google Scholar Citation Profiles - The Good The Bad and The Better
Research in International Management Online since 1999
Since 2012 Google Scholar offers academics the opportunity to create their own profile, something I
would really recommend you to do. Setting up a Google Scholar Citation Profile is easy and very
quick. A GS Profile is your academic business card, it is the quickest and easiest way for other
academics to see all your publications at one glance. If you have a common name it is also the only
sure fire way to disambiguate your publication record from that of your namesakes.
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These 2nd (and sometimes 3rd and further) versions of the record typically only have a small number
of citations each and are generally the result of misspelling of an author’s name, the title of the
publication or the journal. They can also be caused by Google Scholar parsing errors. For more
details on this, please see: Google Scholar: Stray citations.
Stray citations tend to be particularly common for "nontraditional" publications, such as software,
books, book chapters, and conference papers as there is generally no standardised way to reference
them. It is therefore much harder for Google Scholar to figure out whether they do refer to the same
publication. For instance, although Google Scholar does a much better job than the Web of Science
for references to my Publish or Perish software programme, there are still many stray citations (see
screenshot below), which in my GS Profile I have all merged into the master record. Any records in
your GS Profile that contain merged citations are shown with a * behind the citations. You can merge
strays by logging into your profile, checking the box in front of the records you want to merge, and
clicking merge.
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In most of these cases, the references were actually correct in the referring works and the spelling
errors appear to have been made by ISI data entry staff.
The bad: badly polluted profiles (but you can easily avoid this)
As it is you (not Google Scholar) who is creating this profile, it is you who needs to maintain it and
keep it uptodate. This is not Google Scholar's responsibility. However, many academics only take a
few minutes to create their profile, don’t look at any of the options and thus don't realise the default
option is adding new articles automatically. That's not entirely surprising as Google Scholar doesn't
make it very obvious how to change this. But it actually is very easy to do. Just login to your profile
and click on the little cross you see in the title bar.
Click on "Configure article updates". Then on the next page, click the second option. Don't "fall" for
the Google Scholar "recommended" option. As is common with these type of services, recommended
options cater for lazy and forgetful people. You might think it will save you time as you do not have to
confirm updates every time, but be realistic: how many articles do you publish a year? Most of us do
not publish so much that logging in, after an email promp with a link, to approve legitimate additions
becomes a burden. It takes all of 30 seconds. It is also a great opportunity to manually correct or
supplement anything that GS got wrong by editing the record in question.
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But even if your name is unique like mine you might want to keep th quality control in your own
hands. Below are three publications that GS thinks should be in my profile. The first two are just
weird. The third one seems to be conflating two articles in the same issue of Scientometrics. Do you
think any of them would add much to my credibility as an academic researcher? Thought not!
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Since version 6 using Publish or Perish also allows you to search for key words and institutions,
making it very easy to get an overview of the most cited academics in a particular field or institution.
This can be particularly helpful when looking for collaborators, reviewers, keynote speakers etc.
Please note though that fields in Google Scholar are selfselected and not standardised. For instance,
for one of my own areas of expertise, I have seen four different variants used: "International HRM",
"IHRM", "International Human Resource Management" and "International HR".
Related blogposts
Publish or Perish in the news
How to merge “stray citation" records?
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Health warning: Might contain multiple personalities
Sacrifice a little accuracy for a lot more comprehensive coverage
Bank error in your favour? How to gain 3,000 citations in a week
Web of Science: How to be robbed of 10 years of citations in one week!
Google Scholar is a serious alternative to Web of Science
Publish or Perish: Realising Google Scholar's potential to democratise citation analysis
Publish or Perish General Search a Swiss Army Knife?
Copyright © 2018 AnneWil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Sun 25 Nov 2018 20:00
AnneWil Harzing is Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London and
visiting professor of International Management at Tilburg University. In addition to her academic
duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish
or Perish software program.
academic etiquette publish or perish tips
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