RILAS Masterguide

Google Scholar provides citation data for all publications indexed in GS, including journal articles, books, book chapters, conference papers, working papers, theses and more.

Google Scholar Citations profiles

1. Authors that first create a Google Scholar Citations profile can seamlessly track data about the citation counts for their publications.
2. Authors can improve the quality of publication metadata
3. Authors can add missing publications to their profiles
4. Authors can merge and de-duplicate publications
5. The author h-index is automatically generated and kept current
6. A graph of the citation-data is also displayed and can be exported 

Shortest path to your Google Scholar metrics (Option A)

1. The most accessible way to produce the citation counts for your publications in Google Scholar is by creating an individual Google Scholar Citations profile
2. Remember that it is very important that you keep on maintaining your profile to reduce the number of errors in your profile

Longer path to your Google Scholar citation counts (Option B)

1. If setting up your Google Scholar Citations profile is not immediately possible you can create a list of the publications you are tracking. Keep that in either of these formats: .csv OR .xls OR .xlsx  - because that produces a more flexible and systematic way of recordkeeping for your research metrics and other variable that may indicate research impact in all its varied shapes. 
2. Now you are able to Copy + Paste from this list into the search box of Google Scholar. This tends to help with error-proofing the search process
3. Having a spreadsheet also allows adding additional columns for added variables in future - changes tend to be ongoing
4. You can download a comma-separated file (CSV) or an excel file of your publications from Minerva Elements, especially handy if your publication list in Minerva is up-to-date
5. Alternatively you can keep a habit of keeping your own CSV or excel file of your publications up-to-date for future use in all sort of ways
6. Zotero has a feature where you can export publications easily from your library into a CSV file - so you could consider this option too
7. Remember that Minerva Elements (or any other system) has no way of tracking GS citation data (harvesting from Google Scholar) – as Google Scholar do not provide access to their API or metadata

Searches for publications (Journal Articles, Conference papers, etc.) - each time in a different way with varied effect.

Search example

In the first attempt the words from the publication title is copied straight into the search box and no phrase marks at the start and the end. The result is almost 2.5 million results.

Search example

This time there are phrase marks at the beginning and the end of the search words. The results are reduced to '96' more focused listings. The phrase can be anywhere (not necessarily in the title field).

Search example

This time the phrase is required in the title only. We found 4 listings.

[Citation] listings: Google Scholar often report more than one occurrence of the same publication. These multiple occurrences causes 'stray' entries, that is not aggregated under the master record. The second, third and next versions often have small numbers of citations each, with the effect that the citation count for the main entry is reduced by these numbers. See how many of these entries are labeled with the word [citation] in front and is often not hyperlinked either.

Many researchers and authors with public Google Scholar Citations profiles allow others to find their related works by clicking on the hyperlink within an individual article, book or book chapter reference in Google Scholar. This time we can see, the author have combined multiple entries into one. The benefit of having your own Google Scholar Citation profile should now be clear.

You can make a case about the impact of your career of producing research outputs (productivity) and the impact of the outputs collectively (citation counts) based on your h-index in Google Scholar.

If you have a Google Scholar Citations account it helps you to take control of your own publication information and it displays your h-Index as part of that.

When a publication collects at least 10 citations each the author's i10-index is calculated. This is an alternative measure to the h-index. 

This is a metric that can be used to benchmark the performance of the Author. The benchmark should be used to compare against researchers with similar research area interests, in similar institutions and with similar length of career, etc.

The performance of the Author is often benchmarked during decisions about tenure, promotion, or recruitment.

Citations (total citation counts) for all publications in your Google Scholar Citations profile is added up. A chart with a bar for each year and citations per year is generated (by clicking on the total count).