Incorrect Google Scholar profiles

Google Scholar Citations: Personal bibliometric public profiles

          Google Scholar Citations is one of the best database of researchers personal public profiles. GS is a free service and it is, by far, the largest bibliometric database, so the profiles are the ones with the best and most complete coverage. An additional advantage is that the profiles are created voluntarily, with full control by the authors themselves, that means that they are also in full charge of maintaining and cleaning the contents according to the basic ethical procedures. However, there are several misunderstandings about the aim and functioning of this powerful tool. We provide a series of advices about the correct use of GSC and a list of incorrect profiles in order to request/suggest to the authors to clean and update (or delete) such profiles.

  1. GSC is designed for profiling individual researchers. There is a different tool for journals called Google Scholar Metrics that provides comparative information and indicators (h indexes) for over 40 000 academic journals and serials. Developing and curating profiles for journals is unfair for comparative or ranking purposes as the coverage criteria or citation windows can be wildly different depending of the profile editor. If an journal editor is interested in obtaining a full picture of GS-derived indicators for his/her periodical we suggest to use the Publish or Perish free software that it is even more complete and descriptive the own profile.
  2. GSC should not be used as bibliographic management tool for collecting records of third parties papers. It is very confusing and there are far better alternatives like the free programs Zotero or Mendeley.
  3. GSC uses by default the "automatic updating" of the records in your profile. In general this feature is very practical and useful, but if your last name is relatively common, then the update can add several or a lot of papers that are authored by you. We strongly recommend to disallow this option and clean your profile of incorrect assigned papers.

Google Scholar profiles to be corrected

          The following list is for informative purposes. If your profile has been corrected, please contact our editor for deleting the entry