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Research Metrics Toolkit

Google Scholar profile

What

A Google Scholar profile provides a list of your publications found in Google Scholar, including basic metrics such as citation counts and h-index and your verified institutional affiliation. If you make your profile public (optional), your profile will appear at the top of Google Scholar searches for your name, making your research easier to find.

Applications

  • Manage your publications in Google Scholar
  • Get publication metrics for your work, such as h-index and citation count
  • Can have a complete list of your publications and improve the discoverability of your research
  • Find citation metrics for publications not indexed in Scopus or Web of Science (e.g., conference papers, books, chapters, reports).

Considerations

  • You need to create and manage your Google Scholar profile yourself.

Caution: Google Scholar

Citations tracked by Google Scholar are not controlled for quality in the same way as Scopus or Web of Science. Metrics from Google Scholar may appear higher and may include errors. However, it can provide better indexing of journal articles and citations than the traditional citation databases in disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences.

How to: Create and manage your Google Scholar profile

Create and add publications to your Google Scholar profile

  1. Go to Google Scholar
  2. Click on My Citations
  3. Login to your personal Google account (or create one if you don’t already have one). Google recommends you use a personal account (not your employers account) so you can easily keep your profile if you move institutions
  4. Complete the form (you need to include your university email address for inclusion in Google Scholar search results) and click Next Step
  5. Google scholar will provide you a list of publications which it thinks belong to you:
    • Click on See all Articles to select individual articles. Scroll through the list and deselect any publications which are not yours
    • If any of your publications are missing, click Search articles to perform a search in Google Scholar to add each of your remaining articles. Click Add to select articles.
  6. Choose whether you want Google to automatically add new publications to your profile or whether you want to do so manually
    • Allowing Google to automatically add new publications can save you time but may erroneously add publications that aren’t yours (especially if you have a common name). You also always have the option of manually searching for and adding publications to your profile.
  7. Review your profile, upload a photo, and go to your university email to click on the verification link. Once you are satisfied with your profile, make it public so it appears in Google Scholar search results.

Analyse Google Scholar citation data and profiles

  • Download the free software Publish or Perish to analyse citations and obtain a range of research metrics from Google Scholar data.

Google Scholar FAQs

  • My Google Scholar account doesn't show up in search results: Please ensure that you have made your profile public and also verified your university email.
  • I find two Google Scholar accounts when I search for my name: You have created Google Scholar profiles with two different Google logins. Login to your Google Scholar account that you want to delete, click on the menu in the top left corner > Settings > Account, then click on Delete Scholar account and confirm your choices.
    Check How to recover your Google Account or Gmail page if you have lost access to your Google account.
  • Visit Google Scholar profile page for more general questions about Google Scholar profiles and publications.

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