Author Archives: Anurag

2013 Scholar Metrics released

Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Today, we are releasing the 2013 version of Scholar Metrics. This release covers articles published between 2008 and 2012.

Scholar Metrics include journal articles from websites that follow our inclusion guidelines, selected conference articles in Computer Science & Electrical Engineering and preprints from arXiv, SSRN, NBER, and RePEc. As in previous releases,  publications with fewer than 100 articles in 2008-2012, or publications that received no citations over this period are not included.

You can browse publications in broad areas like Chemical & Material Sciences, Physics & Mathematics, or Life Sciences & Earth Sciences as well as specific categories such as Computing Systems, Software Systems, Accounting & Taxation or Plasma & Fusion. You will see the top 20 publications in the area ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. To see which articles in a publication were cited the most and who cited them, click on its h-index number.

This release is based on citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar as of mid-July 2013. Since the previous release was based on citations from all articles indexed as of mid-Nov 2012, which is quite a bit later in the calendar year, the new numbers are expected to be a bit lower. Rest assured that this does not indicate that your favorite journal has become less influential over this short period.

For more details, see the Scholar Metrics help page.

Posted by: Helder Suzuki, Software Engineer

Updated Scholar Metrics: Now Grouped by Research Area

Earlier this year, we launched Scholar Metrics which provides an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Today, we are updating Scholar Metrics to make it easier for you to explore publications in research areas that you are interested in.

To get started, you can browse publications in broad areas like Engineering & Computer Science, Health & Medical Sciences, or Social Sciences. You will see the top 20 publications in the area ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. To see which articles in a publication were cited the most and who cited them, click on its h-index number.

To explore more specific research areas, select one of the broad areas, click on the "Subcategories" link and then choose one of the options. For example: Databases & Information Systems, Development Economics, Virology or Composite Materials.

We use a statistical model based on the articles published in the last five years to compute the set of publications associated with each research area. Recognizing the multi-disciplinary nature of many publications, our model allows a publication to be associated with more than one research area.

Browsing by research area is, as yet, available only for English publications. As previously, you can browse the top 100 publications in several languages. You can, of course, also search for specific publications by words in their titles.

Scholar Metrics currently covers articles published between 2007 and 2011. It only includes journal articles from websites that follow our inclusion guidelines, selected conference articles in Computer Science & Electrical Engineering and preprints from arXiv, SSRN, NBER, and RePEC. Scholar Metrics does not include publications with fewer than 100 articles, nor publications that received no citations in 2007-2011.

The metrics are based on citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar as of November 15, 2012. Since our previous metrics were based on citations from all articles indexed as of April 1, 2012, the new numbers are expected to be a bit higher. Alas, that does not indicate that your favorite journal has become more influential over this short period.

For more details, see the Scholar Metrics help page.

Posted by: Helder Suzuki, Software Engineer

Sort by date for legal search

Ever since we added legal search to Google Scholar, researchers have asked us to make it easy to find the most recent court opinions for their queries so that they can make sure they're up to date.

Today, we're adding an option to sort legal search results by date, the most recent appearing first. To see the latest results for your query, click on "Sort by date" in the sidebar.







You can also use the new sort option in combination with court and time restrictions as well as searching within citing documents. For example, opinions in California courts mentioning "terry stop", opinions mentioning "terry stop" in 2007-2008, and opinions and articles citing Terry v. Ohio.

Posted by: Anurag Acharya, Distinguished Engineer

Search recent additions, sorted by date

Over the years, we’ve added several Scholar features to help researchers keep up with recent publications --  customized ranking for recent articles, email alerts and following author profiles. As the next step in this endeavor, today we are making it possible for you to search just the recent additions to the index. The search results are presented in date order, most recently added articles appearing first. To help you decide how far back you would like to scan, each search result indicates how long ago the article was added to the index.

To search recent additions, enter a search query as you normally do, and then click on “Recent additions” in the sidebar of the results page.

You can choose to search over just the abstracts (the common case) or entire articles. Our experience indicates that for search results presented in date order, searching over abstracts often allows you to find the key recent articles quickly.


Posted by: Anurag Acharya, Distinguished Engineer

Google Scholar Metrics for Publications

Most researchers are familiar with well-established journals and conferences in their field. They are often less familiar with newer publications or publications in related fields - there're simply too many! Today, we’re introducing Google Scholar Metrics: an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications.

To get started, you can browse the top 100 publications in several languages, ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. You can also search for publications by words in their titles. For example, [design], [international law], [salud], and [otolaryngology]. To see which articles in a publication were cited the most and who cited them, click on its h-index number.

Scholar Metrics currently covers many (but not all) articles published between 2007 and 2011. It includes journal articles only from websites that follow our inclusion guidelines as well as conference articles and preprints from a small number of hand-identified sources. For more details, see the Scholar Metrics help page.

Here is hoping Google Scholar Metrics will help authors worldwide as they consider where to publish their latest article.

Posted by: Helder Suzuki, Software Engineer

Worldwide Visibility for Korean Research

We have worked with many colleagues outside Google in our effort to make it possible for all researchers to find what their peers have discovered. We are thrilled to share this guest post from one of our colleagues, Prof Sun Huh from the Hallym University, Korea.

Over the past twenty or so years, I have played several roles within the Korean scholarly communication arena, from professor and researcher to author and journal editor. In all of these roles, I have made it a priority to ensure that the medical and scientific research done by our faculty, staff and students can be found and read by researchers around the world.

In the summer of 2006, I was chairing the Committee of Information Management for the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE), when I received an email from Anurag Acharya suggesting that we work together to include KAMJE's KoreaMed platform within the Scholar index. When I introduced the idea to the Association's member-editors, they were delighted by the prospect of gaining more visibility for their journals. After a series of messages and close collaboration with the Scholar engineers, the articles hosted on KoreaMed were soon included in Google and Google Scholar. The relationship was so successful that we opened KoreaMed's full-text platform, Synapse, for indexing in Nov 2007.

With the successful cooperation of KAMJE and Google, Korean medical scholarship now reaches researchers worldwide. I have recently taken on a new role, a volunteer-consultant for the newly formed Korean Council of Science Editors (KCSE), which will try to do for all Korean scientific research what KAMJE has done for medical research. I look forward to working with the Council and our colleagues at Google to extend the reach of Korean scientific scholarship.

Posted by: Sun Huh, Professor of Parasitology, Hallym University

Finding significant citations for legal opinions

Allowing users to find citing documents for an article is a key feature of Google Scholar. Ever since we added legal opinions,  legal researchers have asked us to make it easy to find significant citing decisions for a case - that is, decisions that discuss a case at some length, possibly supporting it, overturning it or differentiating it from others.

Today, we are changing how we present citations to legal opinions. Now, instead of sorting the citing documents by their prominence, we sort them by the extent of discussion of the cited case. Opinions that discuss the cited case in detail are presented before ones that mention the case briefly. We indicate the extent of discussion visually and indicate opinions that discuss the cited case at length, that discuss it moderately and those that discuss it briefly. Opinions that don't discuss the cited case are left unmarked. For example, see opinions citing Dique v. New Jersey State Police, 603 F. 3d 181.



We would like to thank Itai Gurari for his contributions in making this feature possible.

Here is hoping this update will help legal researchers quickly find the significant citations they are looking for.

Posted by Alex Verstak, Senior Staff Engineer

Find and Follow Public Author Profiles

Much of scholarship is learning what others have discovered and building on it. Today, we are making it easier for you to keep up with your colleagues’ work.

Public author profiles already appear in Google Scholar search results when someone searches for an author’s name, e.g., [hal varian]. Now, author names in search results can also link to their profiles, e.g., [active disks], [latent dirichlet allocation model].



If you find an interesting article by an author who has a public profile, you can easily browse his related or recent work. You can also follow his work by creating email alerts for new articles written by him or new citations to his articles.

You can, of course, follow citations to your own articles by going to your public profile and clicking “Follow new citations”. This would alert you to all the research that your work has influenced.



To make it possible for researchers everywhere to find and follow your work, you need to create a profile, make it public, and add a verified email address. Also, if you’ve written articles under different names, e.g., a maiden name, please edit your profile to contain both names, e.g., “Marie Curie (Sklodowska)”. Here is hoping this update will help scholars worldwide keep up with all your work.

Posted by: James Connor, Software Engineer