This document provides an introduction to Google Scholar as a bibliometric data source. It describes Google Scholar's main characteristics, including the large scope of document types and languages it indexes. While Google Scholar provides a wealth of scholarly data and is widely used, the document notes it has limitations for large-scale bibliometric analysis due to limited metadata and lack of quality controls. Tools like Publish or Perish can help gather data from Google Scholar, but professional bibliometrics may find the effort difficult compared to databases like Web of Science and Scopus. Overall, Google Scholar is a valuable resource for exploring less represented areas of science while also raising issues about transparency and potential data manipulation.

1. Introduction to
bibliometric data sources
– GOOGLE SCHOLAR -

2. Introduction to bibliometric data sources
Part 3 (Google Scholar)
Presentation prepared for the EUROPEAN SUMMER SCHOOL
FOR SCIENTOMETRICS by
Nicolas Robinson-Garcia and Daniel Torres-Salinas
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareALike 4.0 International License2
http://nrobinsongarcia.com
@nrobinsongarcia
http://sl.ugr.es/torressalinas
@torressalinas

3. CONTENTS
▪ Description of data source
▪ Getting data from Google Scholar
▪ Final considerations
3

4. 1.
DESCRIPTION OF THE
DATA SOURCE
Main characteristics of Google Scholar

5. GOOGLE SCHOLAR, NO PRESENTATIONS
NEEDED!
5
Researchers’ Use of
Academic Libraries and
their Services
RIN, 2007

6. 6
Researchers of
Tomorrow: the research
behavior of Generation Y
doctoral students
2012
GOOGLE SCHOLAR, NO PRESENTATIONS
NEEDED!

7. “When beginning research, more
than 75% are likely or extremely
likely to start with Google,
followed by Google Scholar, the
online catalog, the article
databases, and Wikipedia in that
order.
Bagget 2012
7
Preferred by students…

8. “Perhaps surprisingly, the simple
searches in Google Scholar had
consistently higher recall and
precision than the expert
searches.
Walters 2011
8
… better than experts

9. SOME FACTS
▪ Launched in 2004
▪ It is a search engine not a database
▪ Indexes material from academic and scientific
web domains
▪ Simplicity as a theme
▪ Offers full text access and citations
But provides very limited metadata!
9

10. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS
Document types
Journal articles
Books
Working papers
Proceedings papers
Technical reports
Presentations
…
Geographical coverage
The largest geographic
coverage
Greater coverage of
non-English sources
Disciplinary coverage
Larger coverage in
peripheral fields mainly
SSH.
10

11. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS
11
170-175 M
57 M 53 M
Orduña-Malea et al 2015

12. THE oogle FAMILY
GS CITATION PROFILES
▪ Easy to create and update
▪ Alerts on received citations
▪ Some institutions promote
their use ~ ethical issues?
GS METRICS
▪ Journal rankings based on
H-5 Index
▪ Rankings by fields (top100)
(only English) and
languages (top20)
▪ ≥100 pubs journals
excluded
12

13. Our own Juan in GS Profiles
13

14. Searching for scientometrics gurus with label:
14

15. Looking at the scientific community @ KU Leuven
15

16. Ethical issues, transparency and responsibility.
Enforcing scholars to use a commercial tool and its dangers
16
Delgado López-Cózar et al 2014

17. Ethical issues, transparency and responsibility.
Enforcing scholars to use a commercial tool and its dangers
17

18. 18
oEasy to set up (just search for your
papers)
oTerrific tool for comparing researchers
within a field or department
oAutomatically updated basic
bibliometric data
oNo restrictions on source, language or
area
oEveryone can measure their
performance (and their colleagues')
oData can be easily manipulated (a
researcher can self-claim non-
authored papers)
oCan stimulate vanity and ego
oCan generate unfair comparisons
(for example, researchers from
different areas in a single univ)
oCan generate unfair analysis by
non-bibliometric experts
STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES

19. GS metrics overall ranking
19

20. Top journals in German according to GS Metrics
20

21. 21
oFree product to compare and rank
journals
oWe can get impact information
about non-JCR journals and about
national and SSH publications
oTransparency: citations for every
paper that contributes to the h-
index can be checked
oHigh correlation with JCR Impact
factor (0.82)
oCan be easily replicated
o Methodological inconsistencies
such as comparing journals from
different areas
o Lack of proper bibliographic
control (duplicates, “dirty” data,…)
o No selection criteria
o No action against data
manipulation
o Just top results are presented
o H-index favours highly
productive journals
STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES

22. MAIN TOOLS WITHIN
Alerts
Email result updates
from
▪ Saved research
queries
▪ Citing documents
▪ GS Author profiles
▪ Citations to GS
profiles
Updates
Alerts of papers
based on:
▪ Search history
▪ Citations profile
▪ References
▪ Title
▪ Co-authors
Library + Cite
▪ Like a reference
manager
▪ Allows use of labels
▪ Chrome add-on
allows searching
GS anywhere
▪ Also offers citation
in any format
22

23. 2.
GETTING DATA FROM
GOOGLE SCHOLAR
Google Scholar as a bibliometric data
source

24. GETTING THE FACTS STRAIGHT
▪ Google Scholar is the most powerful academic
search engine currently
▪ It also offers great functionalities for citizen
bibliometrics
▪ It is possible to use GS for bibliometric studies
and reports, but it is not feasible nor advisable
24

25. GETTING THE FACTS STRAIGHT
✓ Greater coverage for
SSH
✓ Wider range of document
types
✓ Reliable at the macro
level
✓ Better language and
geographical coverage
х Limited metadata (no
API)
х Not replicable
х No quality controls
х Lack of transparency
25

26. 26
“Google Scholar contains valuable information that is not available from any
other database, but it is impractical to rely on it for large-scale analyses.”
Alberto Martín-Martín
interviewed by Holly Else, 2018

27. “[…] the information in GS, once
retrieved on the basis of existing
publication data and cleaning of
citation sources, indicate
acceptable levels of reliability in
terms of source.
Prins et al., 2014
27
But…

28. 3rd PARTY TOOLS TO GATHER DATA
▪ Harzing’s Publish or Perish
MORE ON THURSDAY!
28

29. 3.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
Wrapping up!

30. THE CRITICAL VIEW
▪ A goldmine of scholarly data
▪ Free does not mean open!
▪ Professional bibliometrics… is it worth the
effort?
30

31. THE OPTIMISTIC VIEW
▪ The world is much bigger than WoS and Scopus
▪ A challenge and an opportunity to explore
marginalised areas science (non-English
literature, SSH)
▪ Giving it back to the people, a trigger for citizen
bibliometrics
31

32. THANKS!
Introduction to bibliometric data
sources – Part 3 (Google Scholar)
32