RILAS Masterguide

"Harzing's Publish or Perish looks up scholarly citations and calculates a number of citation and impact metrics."

Publish or Perish is a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations. It uses various publicly available data sources to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these and calculates a series of citation metrics. The results are available on-screen and can also be copied to the Windows clipboard (for pasting into other applications) or saved to a text file (for future reference or further analysis).

Publish or Perish was designed to help individual academics to present their case for research impact and tenure and promotion to its best advantage, even if you have very few citations.

Quoted from:

Adams, D. (2016, December 20). About publish or perish. Retrieved from https://harzing.com/resources/publish-or-perish/manual/about

Check system requirements first.

Download Publish or Perish

1. Finding the same data that you can find by searching Google Scholar. If Google Scholar data contains inaccuracies, so does the data in Publish or Perish. However, due to the compact display it often becomes much easier to locate inaccurate data.
2. Using the same searching features allowed when using Google Scholar searches
3. With the same up to 1000 document display limit that you will encounter in Google Scholar
4. Reading the data in a tabular way, and getting access to sorting and grouping features of any application with tabular display features
5. Exporting of raw data and statistically analysed data much more seamlessly and with less effort

Data sources for Publish or Perish

Start by selecting one of the available data sources - Google Scholar

Proceed by completing the search box in the same way as for an 'advanced Google Scholar' search box.

1. Author names
   • Use quote marks around initials and lastname/surname to reduce the number of 'garbage' items. If you do not use the quote marks Google Scholar matches the name and initials anywhere in the list of authors.
   • "C Smith" will also match "CM Smith", "CT Smith", "CRM Smith" - use multiple initials wherever practically possible
   • You can also search for "CM Smith" OR "Carol Smith"
   • Try first using "Carol Smith"
2. Years (restricting by)
   • Keep in mind that there are often errors in the citation data or in the parsing of the Google Scholar data. This then remove some relevant works from the result list
3. Title words
   • This is the same as using 'Intitle' within the usual Google Search engine
4. All of the words
   • this includes each of the words in the results returned
5. Any of the words
   • This function implies an OR between each word
6. None of the words
   • Use this to eliminate any unwanted results or subject areas that you are capturing with previous searches
7. The phrase
   • Mostly returns superior results
8. Publication/Journal
   • When including this in the search helps to target the items required

The data for a researcher with a public Google Scholar Citations profile can be accessed with ease. Data can be exported in highly accessible value-added formats.

To do this execute your search in Publish or Perish using the Google Profile search option. Find the profile you are looking for by Auhor name, profile labels, or by profile ID (if known).

How to look up a Google Scholar Profile

After launching Publish or Perish, select 'Google Profile' option from the available data sources.

Add the author "firstname lastname" within double speech marks to lookup. Select the relevant entry tick-box and click 'OK' to return relevant data.

The first section of the screen provides a summary of the author's annualized citation growth. This data can be copied to the clipboard for use in a document or spreadsheet.

Below that on the left side of the screen appears a summary metrics frame with

• Publication year range included
• Citation years included
• Number of papers (publications) in the profile
• Total number of citations for all the publications in the profile
• Cites divided by year
• Cites divided by paper
• Cites divided by number of authors for the publications
• Papers per author for the publications
• h-index for this author
• g-index for this author
• hI, norm
• hI, annual
• Count

This metrics can be saved to file in a variety of formats (.csv - .txt - .rtf)

Read more about PoP metrics

**Because not all metrics suit all researchers (due to age differences, field differences, publication strategies, etc.) it is important to be more flexible and select the metrics most appropriate to your purpose.

PoP tip 39: What the heck are all these metrics (1)? Simple metrics

PoP tip 40: What the heck are all these metrics (2)? H and G index

PoP tip 41: What the heck are all these metrics (3)? hI, norm and hI,annual

In the main section of the result screen, you will see the detailed individualised display of metrics per publication within the current Google profile. This detailed data can be exported by selecting 'Save as file' in any of the following formats:

• Full query report (.rtf)
• Results as csv
• Results as BibTeX
• Results as ISI/WoS export
• Results as JSON

Detailed metrics for each publication is computed and displayed (not immediately available by using the Google Scholar interface). This data can be shared with other applications to produce customised visualisations.

Included is an example search results (to find citation counts) for one publication using Google Scholar data via Publish or Perish.

Step one: Enter the search for the publication 

Step two: Click 'lookup direct'

• Resulting from the search you will find a summary of the publication in tabular form in the results panel
• A metrics panel is available on the left which breaks up the total number of citations for the paper into cites/year; cites/paper; cites/author; etc.
• This offers additional data that could be incorporated into the narrative around the impact of this particular publication

Results can now be saved as file to open in a comma separated value file (Excel or other spreadsheet program).

Alternatively any results can be saved into a suitable format to export into another program and include in another workflow.