Google Scholar Citations

http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html

Google Scholar Citations provides a simple way for scholars to keep track of citations to their articles.

• Authors can check who is citing their publications, graph citations over time and compute several citation metrics.
• Authors can also create an automatically maintained public profile that lists all their articles.
• An author's public profile can appear in Google Scholar results when someone searches for his name. (e.g., richard feynman).

Google Scholar Citations is currently in limited launch with a small number of users. This is a new direction for us and we plan to use the experience and feedback from the limited launch to improve the service. We plan to make Google Scholar Citations available to all users at a later date.

If you are a current user, we thank you for your willingness to work with an early version. We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions (you can use the Provide feedback link in your profile).

Setting up your profile

How do I create my profile?

 You can sign up for a Google Scholar Citations profile. It's quick and free.

Some of my articles are not in my profile. How do I add missing articles?

Select the "Add" option from the Actions menu. Search for your article(s) using title(s), keywords, or your name.

To add one article at a time, click on "Search articles" and then on "Add article" next to the article(s) you wish to add. Your citation metrics will update immediately to account for the articles(s) you added. If your search doesn't find the article you want to add, click on the "Add article manually" link. Then, type in the title, the authors, etc., and click "Save". Keep in mind that citations to manually added articles may not appear in your profile for a few days.

To add a group of related articles, click on "Search article groups" and then on "Add article group" next to the group you wish to add. If you have written articles under different names, with multiple groups of colleagues, or in different journals, you may need to select multiple groups. Your citation metrics will update immediately to account for the groups(s) you added. When you add an article group, Google Scholar will also keep track of changes to this group as search robots index the web. You can choose to have these changes automatically applied to your profile (recommended) or emailed to you for review. Select "Profile updates" under the Actions menu to configure the updates.

Some of the articles in my profile aren't mine. Why are they included in my profile?

Alas, Google Scholar has no way of knowing which articles are really yours. Author names are often abbreviated and different people sometimes share similar names. We use a statistical model to try to tell different authors apart but such automatic processes are not always accurate. The best way to fix this is to look through the articles in your profile and remove the ones that were written by others.

How do I remove articles that aren't mine?

Select the articles you would like to remove. Then, choose the "Delete" option from the Actions menu.

I deleted one of the articles in my profile by mistake. How do I fix this?

Deleted articles are moved to the Trash. To view articles in the Trash, select the "View Trash" option from the Actions menu. To restore an article from the Trash, select the article and click on the "Restore" button.

The description of one of my articles isn't correct. How do I fix it?

Click on the title of the article and then click on the "Edit" button. When you finish your changes, click on the "Save" button.

If you have substantially changed the bibliographic record (title, authors, journal, etc.), Google Scholar may not able to match it up with Google Scholar's index right away. If so, it may take a few days for your citation metrics to include the updated article.

My profile shows the same article twice. How do I fix this?

Select both versions of the article. Next, choose the "Merge" option from the Actions menu. You will then see both citations for the article listed. Click "Select" next to the best citation to the article (you can edit it later if you wish). This will merge the two versions.

Your citation counts and citation metrics will be automatically updated to count the versions you've merged as a single article, not two different articles. The "Cited by" count for the merged article will have a marker to indicate that it includes citations for multiple article versions.

I merged a version with 27 citations with the one with 4 citations. How come the merged article has 30 citations - shouldn't it be 31?

No, the cited-by count after the merge is the number of papers that cite the merged article. One of these probably cites both versions that you've merged, the 27+4=31 formula counts this citation twice. But if the count has dropped below 27... ugh, please do let us know.

Making your profile public

Will my profile be visible to others?

Your profile is private and visible only to you until and unless you make your profile public.

How do I make my profile public?

Click the "Edit" link next to "My profile is private" and select the "My profile is public" option.

How do I see what my profile will look like to others before I make it public?

Click the "Edit" link next to "My profile is private". Next, click on "Preview public version".

How do I link to my public profile?

Click on the "Link" link next to "My profile is public". That will show the Public URL for your profile which you can add to your homepage or email to your colleagues. Highlight it with the mouse and paste it wherever you wish.

I have changed my mind about making my profile public. How do I make it private again?

Click on the "Edit" link next to "My profile is public". Select the "My profile is private" option.

My profile is already public. Is there anything else I need to do to make it available for inclusion in Google Scholar search results?

You also need to add a verified email address at your university.

To be eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search results, your profile needs to be public and needs to have a verified email address at your university (non-university email addresses, such as gmail.com, hotmail.com, aol.com, yahoo.com, qq.com etc, are not suitable for this purpose). To add a verified email to your profile, click on the "Edit" link next to "No verified email", add your email address at your institution and click "Save". We will send you an email message with a verification link. Once you click on this link, the email address will be marked verified. Your profile will now be eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search results.

Rest assured, Google Scholar will NOT display your email address on your public profile. Nor will Google Scholar sell it, trade it, or use it to send you email unrelated to Google Scholar.

Exploring citations to your articles

How do I see the list of citations to one of my articles?

Click on the "Cited by" number for the article.

How do I see the citation graph for one of my articles?

Click on the title of the article.

How do I get notified about new citations to one of my articles?

Click on the "Cited by" number for your article and then click on the envelope icon in the green bar below the search box. Then we'll email you when newly published articles cite yours.

Why is the "Cited by" count for one of my articles crossed out?

Google Scholar considers this article the same as another article in your profile. We display the "Cited by" count next to both of the duplicates, but we only count them once in your citation metrics.

We recommend that you merge the duplicates - select both the articles and choose "Merge" from the "Actions" menu.

I like other citation metrics. Do you plan to add the g-index or the e-index? Or maybe the w-index?

Not yet. We compute two versions (All and Recent) of three metrics (h-index, i10-index and Citations). We would like to understand how these metrics are used before considering additional metrics.

The number of citations to one of my articles is too low. I know of several articles citing it that are not included in the list of citations. What I can do to help fix this?

Your "Cited by" counts come from the Google Scholar index. You can change the articles in your profile, but citations to them are computed and updated automatically as we update Google Scholar.

To change the "Cited by" counts in your profile, you would need to have them updated in Google Scholar. Google Scholar generally reflects the state of the web as it is currently visible to our search robots and to the majority of users. If some of the citations to your article are not included, chances are that the citing articles are not accessible to our search robots or are formatted in ways that make it difficult for our indexing algorithms to identify their bibliographic data or references.

To fix this, you'll need to identify the specific citing articles with indexing problems and work with the publisher of these articles to make the necessary changes (see our inclusion guidelines for details). For most publishers, it usually takes 3-6 months for the changes to be reflected in Google Scholar; for very large publishers, it can take much longer.