How to set up your google scholar profile: A brief technical guide

Himel Mondal; Sarika Mondal; Shaikat Mondal

doi:10.4103/jphpc.jphpc_1_22

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Year : 2022 | Volume : 3 | Issue : 3 | Page : 53-55

How to set up your google scholar profile: A brief technical guide

Himel Mondal¹, Sarika Mondal², Shaikat Mondal³
¹ Department of Physiology, Saheed Laxman Nayak Medical College and Hospital, Koraput, Odisha, India
² Freelance Medical Writer, Medical Education and Research Association, Kolkata, India
³ Department of Physiology, Raiganj Government Medical College, Raiganj, West Bengal, India

Date of Submission	06-Jan-2022
Date of Decision	13-Feb-2022
Date of Acceptance	15-Feb-2022
Date of Web Publication	14-Sep-2022

Correspondence Address:
Dr. Himel Mondal
Department of Physiology, Saheed Laxman Nayak Medical College and Hospital, Koraput, Odisha
India

Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None

DOI: 10.4103/jphpc.jphpc_1_22

Abstract

Google Scholar is a free search engine that provides information about scholarly articles available on the Internet. An author can track the citations and other author-level metrics such as the h-index and i10-index in the Google Scholar profile. Opening an account in Google Scholar is free. An author can open the account with the Google account (e. g., Gmail account credential) details. If an institutional e-mail address is available, the author can verify the e-mail address. However, this is not a prerequisite for opening an account. In this article, we provide a brief technical guide on the creation of a Google Scholar profile.

Keywords: Author profile, citation, electronic mail, Google Scholar, h-index, i10-index, Internet, search engine

How to cite this article:
Mondal H, Mondal S, Mondal S. How to set up your google scholar profile: A brief technical guide. J Public Health Prim Care 2022;3:53-5

How to cite this URL:
Mondal H, Mondal S, Mondal S. How to set up your google scholar profile: A brief technical guide. J Public Health Prim Care [serial online] 2022 [cited 2022 Oct 1];3:53-5. Available from: http://www.jphpc.org/text.asp?2022/3/3/53/354811

Introduction

Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com) is a service provided by the tech giant Google Inc. It is a search engine that can be used for searching scholarly articles on the Internet. It also provides a user to create an account and maintain the publications on the profile.^[1] After creating the account, the researcher or author can add or delete articles to the profile. The author can keep track of the citations and author-level metrics such as h-index or i10-index. An h-index is the “highest number of articles h where h articles received at least h citation each.” For example, if an author has ten articles and six of the articles receives at least six citations (and seven articles did not receive at least seven citations each) receives an h-index of 6. An i10-index is the “highest number of articles that receive at least ten citations.”^[2] A Google Scholar profile can be shared with other channels for the promotion of the researchers' profile and to build a credible online presence.

With this background, in this article, we share how a researcher or an author can create an account in Google Scholar. We presume that the guide would help novice authors in creating their online profiles.

Creation of an Account

The following steps may be followed to set up the Google Scholar profile of researchers [Figure 1].

Figure 1: Steps to set up Google Scholar profile of a researcher – (a) initiation button, (b) profile page and next button, (c) three-bar icon and article list, (d) forward arrow, (e) optional features and done button, (f) camera icon to set profile photo, (g) edit button for co-authors, (h) addition button to add articles, (i) delete button

Click here to view

Login to your Google account (i.e., Gmail account)
Go to https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html
Click on “setup your Google Scholar profile” [Figure 1]a
Fill the details up; use the correct full name, current post and affiliation, keywords of areas of interest, any personal account on the homepage; keep the “e-mail for verification” blank if the institutional e-mail is not available; click on the “next” button [Figure 1]b
Click on the three-bar button to shift from “select groups of articles that you wrote” to “select articles that you wrote;” select (tick mark) the articles [Figure 1]c; click on the forward arrow button [Figure 1]d
Select “apply updates automatically;” tick mark on the “make my profile public;” click on the “done” button [Figure 1]e
The account would be shown; click on the camera button and set a profile photo [Figure 1]f
Click on the “edit” button on the right side of “co-authors” [Figure 1]g; search (i. e., click on watch glass icon) co-author by their names; add (i. e., click on the plus sign icon) the author
Manual addition of articles can be done by selecting the addition (i. e., plus sign icon) [Figure 1]h; any inadvertently added article can be deleted by selecting the article box and “delete” button [Figure 1]i.

An Example

The Google Scholar profile of the second author is shown in [Figure 2]. The profile page includes the profile picture, status of e-mail verification, and number of articles (with citation and year of publication) written by the author on the left side. On the right-hand side, the citation counts, h-index, i10-index, year-wise citation in a bar graph, and co-author list are shown.

Figure 2: An example of a Google Scholar profile showing profile picture, affiliation, articles, citation counts, h-index, i10-index, and co-authors of the researcher

Click here to view

Discussion

In the profile shown in [Figure 2], the h-index of the author is “2” as two of her articles got at least two citations each (and three of her articles did not receive at least three citations each). The first article got at least ten citations. Hence, the i10-index is “1.”

Google Scholar is the most comprehensive source for citations count. Various other databases such as Scopus or Web of Sciences only count the citations in their database. Hence, the citation counts would be different in a different database. Google Scholar includes all the possible sources including so-called questionable journals.^[3] That's why Google Scholar citation counts are even criticized.^[4] However, a citation in any source should be considered an impact of the article. The advantage of Google Scholar is a continuous update from all possible sources.

If there is an availability of an institutional e-mail address, the researcher can update it to get a verification status. This authenticates the researcher's profile to be associated with a particular institution or organization. However, if it is not available, the user can still use all the functionality of the profile. The example profile shown in [Figure 2] does not have an institutional e-mail address and was opened with the Google account.

For the promotion of the profile, a researcher can share the Scholar profile link to a social media account such as Linkedin, Facebook, or Twitter. In addition, an e-mail signature can be set up with the profile link. A personal blog or website may be enriched with profile details having the Google Scholar profile link.^[5]

Many of our colleagues seek our help in the creation of Google Scholar profiles. Hence, we decided to share the brief technical guide in this article. We presume that researchers including primary care physicians with research interests would be benefitted from this article.

Conclusion

Google Scholar profile is one of the free author profiling services available for researchers. Opening an account on the portal is discussed in this article. A brief guide about maintenance of the account is also described. This technical guide would help the researcher in opening and maintaining an account in Google Scholar.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

References

1.	Vine R. Google scholar. J Med Libr Assoc 2006;94:97-9.
2.	Mondal H, Mondal S. A brief review on article-, author-, and journal-level scientometric indices. Indian Dermatol Online J 2022. [doi: 10.4103/idoj.IDOJ_729_21].
3.	Falagas ME, Pitsouni EI, Malietzis GA, Pappas G. Comparison of pubmed, scopus, web of science, and google scholar: Strengths and weaknesses. FASEB J 2008;22:338-42.
4.	Dadkhah M, Lagzian M, Borchardt G. Questionable papers in citation databases as an issue for literature review. J Cell Commun Signal 2017;11:181-5.
5.	Mondal H, Mondal S. How to enhance your profile on academic portals, social media, and personal websites? CosmoDerma 2022;2:7.