Developing a Researcher Profile & Managing Your Research Environment: Google Scholar Citations

Google Citations Allows You To:

Track citations to your publications

• Check who is citing your publications.
• Graph your citations over time.
• Compute citation metrics.

View publications by colleagues

• Keep up with their work.
• See their citation metrics.

Appear in Google Scholar search results

• Create a public profile that can appear in Google Scholar when someone searches for your name.

• Interdisciplinary, widely used, easy to maintain.
• Google doesn't have access to everything.
• Many databases do not allow Google to index their content.

View Google Scholar Profiles from your TXST colleagues:

• TXT Google Scholar Profiles

Google Scholar Setup/FAQ's

Google Scholar Search Tips

You may find that the number of citations to your work in Google Scholar is higher than in other databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, or others. 

In contrast to other databases, Google Scholar does not provide a list of the sources that it is searching to find citations to your work. There have been concerns about the quality of the citations that are counted as they may not originate from peer-reviewed literature. Google Scholar will count citations from online slide sets, reports, undergraduate essays, and other sources. Google Scholar may also not pick up citations from older content as it may not be available in a digital format. 

Citations to some sources, for example, books, may be much better in Google Scholar because they are not covered in the other subscription bibliographic databases. The inclusion of citations to books can be very useful for researchers in which non-journal article outputs are more common.

No database is likely to be able to cover all outputs in all subjects. Bear this in mind when using citation data from different sources.

Go to Google Scholar Citations

Creating a Google Scholar account can showcase your papers and the citations that they've received. It can also make your work more discoverable as your profile will turn up in Google searches. 

Step 1 - Create a Google account

If you do not yet have a Google account, you can create one here: https://accounts.google.com/signup. This will give you a Gmail address which you can use or ignore forever if you wish. 

Entering your birthday is required, but other information is optional.

Agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy: 

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy

2. Enter your Profile Information

Follow the instructions to create your profile adding your name, institution affiliation, research areas, university email address (optional; not made public but as a backup email) and the link to your Texas State University profile page.

3. Add Articles 

Google Scholar will then search for articles that it thinks are by you and ask whether you want them added to your profile. Some of it will be you, others may be by academics with the same or similar names. 

Once logged in, you can also search for articles, then click to add to your profile, or add them manually.

4. Select your Settings

You can give Google permission to automatically update the list of articles in your profile, or choose to receive suggestions via email for review before adding to your profile. NOTE: We recommend "Email me updates for review" to ensure that correct items are added to your profile. 

You may also choose to make your profile visible, which we recommend, by selecting "Make my profile public". 

4. Maintain your Profile

When your profile is complete, you can browse some of your citations and see how people are using your work and check out your h-index.