Google Scholar Blog

Google Scholar Citations Open To All

2011-11-16T20:30:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, we introduced a limited release of Google Scholar Citations, a simple way for authors to compute their citation metrics and track them over time. Today, we’re delighted to make this service available to everyone! Click here and follow the instructions to get started.

Here’s how it works. You can quickly identify which articles are yours, by selecting one or more groups of articles that are computed statistically. Then, we collect citations to your articles, graph them over time, and compute your citation metrics - the widely used h-index; the i-10 index, which is simply the number of articles with at least ten citations; and, of course, the total number of citations to your articles. Each metric is computed over all citations and also over citations in articles published in the last five years.

Your citation metrics will update automatically as we find new citations to your articles on the web. You can also set up automated updates for the list of your articles, or you can choose to review the suggested updates. And you can, of course, manually update your profile by adding missing articles, fixing bibliographic errors, and merging duplicate entries.

As one would expect, you can search for profiles of colleagues, co-authors, or other researchers using their name, affiliation, or areas of interest, e.g., researchers at US universities or researchers interested in genomics. You can add links to your co-authors, if they already have a profile, or you can invite them to create one.

You can also make your profile public, e.g., Alex Verstak, Anurag Acharya. If you choose to make your profile public, it can appear in Google Scholar search results when someone searches for your name, e.g., [alex verstak]. This will make it easier for your colleagues worldwide to follow your work.

We would like to thank the participants in the limited release of Scholar Citations for their detailed feedback. They were generous with their time and patient with an early version. Their feedback greatly helped us improve the service. The key challenge was to make profile maintenance as hands-free as possible for those of you who prefer the convenience of automated updates, while providing as much flexibility as possible for those who prefer to curate their profile themselves.

Here is hoping that Google Scholar Citations will help researchers everywhere view and track the worldwide influence of their own and their colleagues’ work.

Posted by: James Connor, Software Engineer

Shall I compare thee to... a cytotoxicity assay?

2011-08-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

You don't have to be an English lit major to appreciate Shakespeare's endless store of witticisms, catch-phrases and quotes. Which is why it makes us chuckle a bit when we encounter scholarly research articles that reference them in unexpected ways:

To sleep, perchance to dream (Hamlet)

Nocturnal eating syndromes: to sleep, perchance to eat

To sleep, perchance to leak

More...

To be, or not to be, that is the question (Hamlet)

To slow or not to slow: the economics of the greenhouse effect

To normalize or not to normalize? Fat is the question

More...

Much Ado About Nothing

The placebo: Is it much ado about nothing

Programmed ribosomal frameshifting: Much ado about knotting!

More...

Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo (Romeo and Juliet)

Wherefore art thou r3579x?: anonymized social networks, hidden patterns, and structural steganography

Wherefore Art Thou Copper? Structures and Reaction Mechanisms of Organocuprate Clusters in Organic Chemistry

More...

Et tu, Brute? (Julius Caesar)

Et Tu, Fair Use-The Triumph of Natural-Law Copyright

Et tu, acetaminophen?

More...

All that glisters is not gold (The Merchant of Venice)

All that palsies is not Bell's—The need to define Bell's palsy as an adverse event following immunization

All that wheezes is not asthma

More...

There are many more. Happy hunting!

Posted by: Darcy Dapra, Partner Manager

Google Scholar usage by browser

2011-08-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

As webmasters dabble into the land of exciting possibilities enabled by recent developments in browser technology, it's essential to remember that different users use different browsers, and webpages that work in one browser will not necessarily work in another. But developer time is limited - so, how important is it for a scholarly website to support version N of browser B? To help answer this qestion, here's the breakdown of Google Scholar searches by browser, fresh from the logs.

*Fraction of Google Scholar searches by browser for periods ending August 2, 2011.*
	year	month	day
Internet Explorer	59%	47%	46%
Firefox	25%	23%	23%
Chrome & Safari	10%	19%	20%
Unknown	5%	10%	10%
Other	1%	1%	1%

And now for the fine print...

This table doesn't necessarily represent trends in browser adoption, because Google Scholar usage is qualitatively different throughout the year. In particular, summer numbers do not include frantic searches by thundering herds of students studying for their exams; but annual numbers do.

These numbers are certainly heavily influenced by English searches. However, over half of our usage is from outside the US, and non-English speakers tend to search in their own language. Yes, for papers too; yes, I checked; and yes, some of their searches are in English. All things considered, I think the world stats should work well for most websites.

As of last month, versions 7, 8 and 9 of Internet Explorer were used in 18%, 21% and 3% of all searches, respectively. Versions 5 and 6 carry some, uhh, surprises for developers, but luckily their usage has dropped from 3% + 15% = 18% in the annual stats to 0% + 5% = 5% in the monthly stats. So, that settles it - we will only test Google Scholar with IE7+ going forward.

Firefox-wise, 10% of total usage is from version 3, and the vast majority of the remaining 13% is from versions 4 and 5. All three versions are quite similar in their rendering of HTML, so it's often sufficient to cover just the latest version in testing.

I have combined the two Webkit-based browsers, Chrome and Safari, because their rendering of HTML is nearly identical. For minor changes, we often test the latest version of Chrome and skip Safari, because Chrome's usage is currently 15% vs. Safari's 5%. Both of these browsers tend to be reasonably up to date - the vast majority of their searches last month came from Chrome versions 12 and 13 and Safari version 5.

All mobile browsers combined currently make up a very small fraction of searches, though whether one can call millions of searches "very small" is certainly a matter of perspective. The same applies to Opera and to a number of other browsers and platforms. Occasional testing of infrequently used browsers is key to a reasonable balance between serving your users and taking forever to rollout.

Bottom line? We recommend that you test your scholarly website with at least three browsers - Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 3+, and Chrome 12+. If it doesn't work with either one of these browsers, then it likely doesn't work for a lot of your users.

Posted by: Alex Verstak, Software Engineer

Google Scholar Citations

2011-07-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

Citation metrics are often used to gauge the influence of scholarly articles and authors. Some of you already track your citation metrics by regularly looking up your articles in Google Scholar. Many of you have asked us for an easier way to do this.

Today we’re introducing Google Scholar Citations: a simple way for you to compute your citation metrics and track them over time.

We use a statistical model based on author names, bibliographic data, and article content to group articles likely written by the same author. You can quickly identify your articles using these groups. After you identify your articles, we collect citations to them, graph these citations over time, and compute your citation metrics. Three metrics are available: the widely used h-index, the i-10 index, which is the number of articles with at least ten citations, and the total number of citations to your articles. We compute each metric over all citations as well as over citations in articles published in the last five years. These metrics are automatically updated as we find new citations to your articles on the web.

You can enable automatic addition of your newly published articles to your profile. This would instruct the Google Scholar indexing system to update your profile as it discovers new articles that are likely yours. And you can, of course, manually update your profile by adding missing articles, fixing bibliographic errors, and merging duplicate entries.

You can also create a public profile with your articles and citation metrics (e.g., Alex Verstak, Anurag Acharya). If you make your profile public, it can appear in Google Scholar search results when someone searches for your name (e.g., Richard Feynman, Paul Dirac). This will make it easier for your colleagues worldwide to follow your work.

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. Click here and follow the instructions to get started. Keep in mind that this is a limited launch and we may not be able to accept new users when you click. If this happens, we’ll direct you to a sign-up page where you can register to be notified when Google Scholar Citations is available to all users. Meanwhile you can browse existing profiles (e.g., Albert Einstein, Margaret Mead, Alonzo Church) and learn more about Google Scholar Citations.

Update: We are not able to accept new users at this point. We invite you to sign up to be notified when Google Scholar Citations is available to all users.

Posted by: James Connor, Software Engineer

Work Locally, Search Globally

2011-07-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

Recently, I spent a month in Ghana working with NGOs and some government organizations. As a part of this, I visited a health research center in Dodowa, couple of hours from Accra. Staff members gather disease and demographics data from the district for research as well as for health policy recommendations.

The center is in the middle of farmlands with no access to landline phones - Internet access is via flaky mobile networks. When I introduced myself as an engineer working on Google Scholar, I expected I would need to describe Scholar at length and do some demos. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to see eyes light up with recognition. So, I talked to the staff members trying to understand how they use Scholar.

The research center maintains a digital library of scholarly articles related to malaria which is the biggest disease threat in the region. This library is used by researchers at the center as well as by a larger network of scientists interested in malaria. Alexander Nartey (program coordinator) curates the library and uses Scholar to discover newly published papers. Doris Sarpong (demographer/research officer) mentioned that the speed of Scholar helps her get her work done in spite of the limited connectivity. She also liked the ability to restrict results to recent papers. Alberta Amu Quartey (graduate student) works on the history of malaria serology. Scholar helped her find papers going as far back as the 1960s, many of them from Ghana and neighboring regions.

The simplest feedback I heard was from an older researcher who had been working in the field for a while. He liked that he could find anything anyone anywhere had discovered. He said, "A man who has never worn spectacles doesn't really know what he's missing". It is one thing to sit in a conference room in California and argue about Google Scholar features and algorithms and quite another to stand in an African village health center and hear in person what they make possible. Here is hoping Google Scholar can help more researchers in more places see further.

Posted by Mohit Rajani, Software Engineer

A scholarly discovery, just in time for Father’s Day

2011-06-06T17:08:00.001-07:00

Recently, I mentioned to my Dad that I would be rejoining the Google Scholar team. Like many of us, I wanted to explain to him what I work on. I entered his name into Google Scholar to do a quick demo. The first result was a US patent, that he had developed with my uncle, for drilling within a spinal column (whew!). And a bit later was an article from 1968 on Acute Histoplasma Pericarditis.

I said, "Hey Dad, I didn’t know that you had published a scholarly article!” He didn’t answer, going noticeably silent--for several moments. Something about that search result brought tears to his eyes (though he would never admit this) and rendered him speechless. Well, nearly speechless. I think he said almost inaudibly, “I’ll be...”

As it turned out, this was a paper he had written with colleagues and had submitted to the Archives of Internal Medicine 40-odd years ago. He had then moved to Spain as an US Air Force flight surgeon. If the editors or his co-authors had sent him a note of congratulations on its acceptance, it never made its way across the Atlantic. He had long forgotten about it.

On behalf of the Scholar team, and after all these years, congratulations, Dad!

Posted by Darcy Dapra, Partner Manager

Better highlighting for legal cases

2011-02-08T19:06:00.000-08:00

We used to have colorful highlighting for cases. Some users have told us that this is hard to read. We now highlight legal cases more gently and provide an option to remove highlighting entirely. Happy reading!

Posted by James Connor, Software Engineer

Search opinions from specific courts

2011-01-11T09:30:00.000-08:00

When Itai joined the Google Scholar team recently, he noticed many differences between life in New York City and life in the San Francisco Bay Area. One pleasant difference was a sharp drop in near-death experiences involving taxis. With his background as a lawyer, Itai couldn't help but think that there must be a lot fewer taxi-related lawsuits in his new locale! Now that Google Scholar allows users to limit search to specific courts and jurisdictions, he can confirm it—court opinions mentioning a taxi in the Southern District of New York far outnumber those in the Northern District of California.

You can try this out yourself on Google Scholar's advanced search page. You can select a particular federal jurisdiction or state for your search. For example, try searching for cases involving oysters in tax courts or health insurance in Fourth Circuit courts. You can also pick specific courts by clicking on "Select specific courts" and checking off the ones you want. Then you can search for, say, recent opinions about oil spills in Louisiana state and federal courts or cases about election recounts in Florida, Minnesota and Alaska courts.

Finding the right precedent is of course the key to legal research. Here's hoping this new feature will help you find the right cases even faster.

Posted by Chris Hundt and Itai Gurari, Software Engineers

Entertaining legal opinions

2010-07-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

Judicial opinions in common law countries, like the United States, clarify and refine the law of the land. They consider weighty issues, weigh conflicting requirements and carry much weight among all who read them. Here are some opinions for your summer reading.

Rimes v. Curb Records, Inc., 2001 the opinion is written as a series of songs to be sung to tunes by LeAnn Rimes. It starts:

LeAnn Rimes
A very rich and famous star
Wasn't so rich in times afar
But what a talent she had!

Glazner v. Glazner, 2003 illustrates one of the arguments using an imagined dialog between spouses (page 1223).

Jim: Honey, I've been thinking, we ought to move to Alabama.
Liz: But Sweetheart, I thought you liked living in Colorado.
...
Liz: You'll look so good in jailhouse stripes, my Love. When do we move?

Commonwealth v. Robin, 1966 the case was about banning "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller. Justice Musmanno, in his dissent (starting at page 73), is particularly colorful. E.g.,: "Cancer" is not a book. It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity. And in the center of all this waste and stench, besmearing himself with its foulest defilement, splashes, leaps, cavorts and wallows a bifurcated specimen that responds to the name of Henry Miller.

Webster v. Blue Ship Tea Room, Inc., 1964 the opinion includes a page-long discussion of recipes & history of chowder starting with (page 424): Chowder is an ancient dish preexisting even "the appetites of our seamen and fishermen." It was perhaps the common ancestor of the "more refined cream soups, purees, and bisques."

Pennsylvania v. Dunlap, 2008 the opinion starts in the hard-boiled detective style: Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three-dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He'd made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.

Fisher v. Lowe, 1983 the entire opinion is in verse and starts:

We thought that we would never see
A suit to compensate a tree.
A suit whose claim in tort is prest
Upon a mangled tree's behest;

Busch v. Busch, 1999 also in verse, it starts with:

Conrad Busch filed a timely appeal, 
trying to avoid a pre-marital deal 
which says appellee need not pay him support; 
he brings his case, properly, before this Court.

Anderson Greenwood & Co. v. NLRB, 1979 two of the relevant precedents were Wire v. NLRB and Tire v. NLRB, an opportunity to break forth in verse the judges did not miss (page 323). E.g.,

Our decision in Robbins Tire,
Interpreting Congresses' reported desires, 
Exposed workers to their bosses' ire.
The High Court, avoiding this sticky quagmire,

US v. Ramirez-Lopez, 2003 Judge Kozinski, in his dissent, illustrates his argument using a good-news/bad-news dialog between the defendant and his attorney (page 1159). E.g.,

Lawyer: Juan, I have good news and bad news.
Ramirez-Lopez: OK, I'm ready. Give me the bad news first.
...
Lawyer: Due process. We're very proud of it.

US v. Syufy Enterprises, 1990 this case was about movie theatres in Las Vegas. Judge Kozinski includes the names of over 200 movies into his opinion. If you are a movie buff, challenge yourself and see how many you can find! You can see them marked out here.

There are many more such gems. Now that everyone can read US opinions, you can find some yourself. Happy hunting!

Posted by Anurag Acharya, Distinguished Engineer

Search within citing articles

2010-07-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to trace an article’s impact? Take for example Einstein’s famous paper Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?, which has shaped areas as disparate as physics, computer science, and philosophy. We can examine the article’s influence by looking at citations to it, but there are thousands of citations and sifting through them is unwieldy.

Today we’re launching the ability to search within this set. We can see this article’s impact on quantum computation, cryptography, entanglement, or teleportation. We can see its continuing influence on multiple fields by looking at recent citations to it. And we can even discover topics that Einstein probably never thought he would influence, like holism and postmodernism.

Try it out yourself by clicking on a "Cited by" link on the search results page:

and selecting the "Search within articles citing..." checkbox:

Thank you to those who contacted us to request this feature and hats off to the few who figured out how to emulate it by tweaking the URL. We hope this helps you to follow the impact and evolution of ideas.

Posted by James Connor, Software Engineer

Google Scholar Alerts

2010-06-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ever since we launched Google Scholar, people have asked us to help them keep up with current research. Over the years, we’ve made several improvements to help find recently published articles, including the "Recent articles" mode, a simple interface to limit search to recent years, and, of course, more frequent index updates. As the next step in this endeavor, we have recently added email alerts. Now you can create alerts for queries of your interest. When new articles that match your alert query are added to Google Scholar, we’ll send you an email update with links to these articles.

To create an alert for a query, just do a search on Google Scholar as usual (e.g., [prion protein]) and click on the envelope icon which appears at the top of the search results. This will take you to a page with recent results for your query and alert options (e.g., alert options for [prion protein]). If the query returns results other than ones you were looking for, you can tweak it right there and view updated results. Adding more specific search terms often works, and so does placing full author names and multi-word concepts in quotes (e.g., [“quantum computing”]). Then, click on “Create alert” - and bingo! If you’re logged into Gmail, your alert will be created right away. If you’re not logged in, you’ll need to enter your email address and we’ll send you a verification message with links to confirm or cancel the alert. Any email address will do, you don’t need a Gmail account to receive Google Scholar Alerts. Once you click on the confirmation link, your alert will be created and you’ll start receiving email updates on your query.

To create an alert for articles citing a particular paper, first, find this paper in Google Scholar, then click on the “Cited by” link below the search result, and, finally, click on the envelope icon that appears at the top of the list of citing articles. To get updates when any of your papers are cited, it’s often easiest to set up an alert for all mentions of your name in text, e.g., [“E Witten”] with the quotes. To learn of new publications by your colleagues, try registering alerts for their names with an “author:” operator, such as [author:”S Hawking”]. If these alerts return too many results related to other people with the same name, try adding more specific search terms, such as the names of their co-authors, the name of the university they are associated with, or plain old keywords.

So, what does it take to provide an alerts service for the largest collection of research papers on the planet? Good question. To implement Google Scholar Alerts, we had to solve several tricky problems. First, we had to figure out how to quickly find newly available scholarly articles over the entire web. They can and do appear on a variety of locations - on publisher web sites, in scholarly repositories, on researchers’ web pages. Second, we had to determine which of the newly available articles were recently written or published. This can be difficult since many publishers and universities provide archival articles (which are not new) whereas early presentations of a work, such as preprints (which are indeed new), often have no dates associated with them. Third, we needed to update the index much more frequently. Updating a search service while it is being used by a large number of users is somewhat like changing tires on a car while it is going sixty miles an hour. We now add new articles to Google Scholar twice a week; we plan to further increase this frequency. Finally, we had to develop a query suggestion mechanism to help users construct effective alert queries. Our goal was to help people bridge the gap between finding key articles in a large collection (as they’re doing when they search Google Scholar) and finding relevant articles in the much smaller collection of recently published articles (as they would be doing with alerts).

We hope Google Scholar Alerts will help researchers everywhere keep up with the discoveries made by their colleagues worldwide.

Posted by Anurag Acharya, Distinguished Engineer