Scholar Identification Systems: Google Scholar Citations

Google Scholar Citations is a part of Google Scholar that allows authors with Google Scholar Accounts to track citations to their articles, find who is citing their work and view citations over time. It also provides several citation metrics. Information on an author and their work can be found by people doing a Google Scholar search.

There are advantages to the Google Scholar Citations System:

• Provides citation metrics (which may be better than those in other indexes).
• Information can be public or private.
• If public, users can share a link to their information.
• It is based on information that authors choose to accept as their own or add to the system.
• Authors can add information to the system (articles, or an author identifier).

The following disadvantages have been identified regarding Google Scholar Citations:

• Publications not found by searching Google Scholar must be added manually (thus adding information to Google Scholar).
• Google Scholar indexes some questionable publications and resources.
• Commercial - available only for as long as Google wants to make it available (remember Google Reader?).