Bibliometrics and Impact Factor: Google Scholar
This guide explains how impact factor is used and calculated in journal and article rankings, as well as other methods of citation analysis.
Citation Searching in Google Scholar
The citation information in Google Scholar is extracted from the scholarly journal articles within the Scholar database, and from the U.S. patents contained in the Google Patents database (linked below). Users have the option to eliminate the patents as the source of citation data and/or the option to include citations from legal journals and opinions from the federal and state courts. If a publication has been cited by these sources, it will contain a "Cited By Link" in its entry; clicking on that link will display the citing journal articles and patents (and the court opinions, if selected)
How to Find Citation Counts via Google Scholar and "Who is Citing Whom"
- Go to Google Scholar.
- Select Advanced Scholar Search (link to right of search button).
- Enter the appropriate search terms for the item under study. Enter just enough information to find what you need - do not fill in the complete search form.
- Click on the Search Scholar button.
- Locate the correct article in the search results list.
- If the article was cited by others, you will see a "Cited by" link at the bottom of the record. Click this link to view who has cited this item. For more information about searching, access Google Scholar's Help page below.
Be aware:
- Google Scholar does not index all scholarly articles; therefore, some articles citing the item under study may not be counted.
- Google Scholar includes citations from an array of sources in its cited by calculation, including PowerPoints and Word documents, and gives everything an equal rank.
- Author names can be tricky to search and the results can vary greatly depending on how the name is entered; we recommend searching only the author's last name and combining that with the main title in quotations.
- Variants in how the item is cited can result in more than one entry for the item under study.
- The term "citation" in brackets [CITATION] at the beginning of an entry, indicates that the full text of the item is not accessible through Google Scholar. To see the full text of the item, use Usearch to locate the book or journal with the item.
Software & Programs for Google Scholar Citation Data
- Publish or Perish (PoP)PoP is downloadable software providing enhanced analysis of Google Scholar citation data.
- CIDS (Citation Impact Discerning Self-citations)CIDS will analyze publications for self-citation data; this includes the h- and g-indexes calculated both with all cites and then without self-cites. The service is free, however, limitations are many. According to the FAQ page, only one search per email is allowed. There is also a limit of 200 items (in the tutorial, it says 500 items) for the analysis. The analysis takes about 1 minute per item to calculate.
Google Scholar - Useful Links
- Google Scholar CitationsInformation on setting up your profile, exploring citations, updates and general questions.
- Google Scholar HelpFAQ's on Google Scholar features, including Citation Export.
- Google PatentsFAQs on using Google Patents.
Be Informed
- Google Scholar's Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other ProblemsWhy the popular tool can't be used to analyze the publishing performance and impact of researchers
by Peter Jasco, professor and chair of the Library and Information Science Program in the Department of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.