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Managing Your Author Identity: My Citations (Google Scholar)

Google Scholar Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Obtain up to date citation metrics (i10-index, h-index and total citations) and graphs
  • See who has cited your articles
  • Receive updates on new citations to your articles
  • Have an online user profile, if desired

Cons

  • Your "Cited by" counts come from the Google Scholar index, which is not as accurate nor as transparent as database indexes (such as Scopus or Web of Science).

What is Google Scholar's "My Citations"

Google describes "My Citation" system as "a simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles".

Here is an example of a completed "My Citation" account.

Quick Look at Google Scholar's "My Citations"

Getting Started...

You can sign up for a Google Scholar Citations profile through your Google account (if you do not have one, you will need to create an account to use My Citations).

  1. Sign-in to your Google account, or create one if you don't yet have one (Google recommends that you use a personal account, not an account at your place of employment, so that you can keep your profile for as long as you wish).
  2. Next, the Citations sign up form will ask you to confirm the spelling of your name and to enter your affiliation, interests, etc.
  3. On the next page, you will see groups of articles written by people with names similar to yours. Click "Add all articles" next to each article group that is yours or "See all articles" to add specific articles from that group. If you don't see your articles in these groups, click "Search articles" to do a regular Google Scholar search, and then add your articles one at a time. You can do as many searches as you like.
  4. Once you're done with adding articles, it will ask you what to do when the article data changes in Google Scholar. You can either have the updates applied to your profile automatically or you can choose to review them beforehand.

(Source)

Once you have "My Citations"...

Now that you have your account set up, you can add finishing touches to your profile by uploading a professional photo, verifying your institutional email, and ensuring that your citations are all listed.

You can make your profile public (i.e. visible to others, and so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name) by clicking the "Edit" link next to "My profile is private" and select the "My profile is public" option.

Some of the features of Google Scholar include:

  • Checking who is citing your publications
  • Graphing representations of citations over time and computing citation metrics such as your h-index and i10-index
  • Setting up email alerts to notify you of new publications and citations.