Google Scholar Citations the system that covers more publications by an author: The cases of B Cronin and WG Stock

Dorsch, I. (2017)
Relative visibility of authors’ publications in different information services. 
Scientometrics, 112(2), 917-925

Publication hit lists of authors, institutes, scientific disciplines etc. within scientific databases like Web of Science or Scopus are often used as a basis for scientometric analyses and evaluations of these authors, institutes etc. However, such information services do not necessarily cover all publications of an author. The purpose of this article is to introduce a re-interpreted scientometric indicator called ‘‘visibility,’’ which is the share of the number of an author’s publications on a certain information service relative to the author’s entire oeuvre based upon his/her probably complete personal publication list. To demonstrate how the indicator works, scientific publications (from 2001 to 2015) of the information scientists Blaise Cronin (N = 167) and Wolfgang G. Stock (N = 152) were collected and compared with their publication counts in the scientific information services ACM, ECONIS, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, Infodata eDepot, LISTA, Scopus, and Web of Science, as well as the social media services Mendeley and ResearchGate. For almost all information services, the visibility amounts to less than 50%. The introduced indicator represents a more realistic view of an author’s visibility in databases than the currently applied absolute number of hits in those databases.

Scientific information discovery: Still a mission of the academic library? Google & Google Scholar empire

Rodríguez-Bravo, B.; Simões, MG; Vieira-de-Freitas, MC; Frías, JA (2017)
Descubrimiento de información científica: ¿todavía misión y visión de la biblioteca académica? 
El profesional de la información, 26 (3): 464-479
https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2017.may.13

Access to quality content is key to research and one of the core values that scholars assign to the library. Bibliographic data play a fundamental role in university libraries, which devote abundant resources to obtaining and hosting them for access.
This study investigates where and how bibliographic information is discovered, and highlights the role of search engines, databases, repositories, and web-scale discovery services in that process. The effort that libraries have made in implementing these services seems to have paid off in relation to the increase in the use of collections. However, Google remains the top option for discovering scientific information. This is a review study, based on the analysis of original research and results from recent reports.

An evidence-based review of academic web search engines (Google Books, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic), 2014-2016: Implications for librarians’ practice and research agenda

Fagan, J.C. (2017). 
An evidence-based review of academic web search engines, 2014-2016: Implications for librarians’ practice and research agenda.  Information Technology and Libraries, 36, 2

Academic web search engines have become central to scholarly research. While the fitness of Google  Scholar for research purposes has been examined repeatedly, Microsoft Academic and Google Books  have not received much attention. Recent studies have much to tell us about Google Scholar’s  coverage of the sciences and its utility for evaluating researcher impact. But other aspects have been understudied, such as coverage of the arts and humanities, books, and non-Western, non-English  publications. User research has also tapered off. A small number of articles hint at the opportunity for  librarians to become expert advisors concerning scholarly communication made possible or enhanced by these platforms. This article seeks to summarize research concerning Google Scholar, Google Books, and Microsoft Academic from the past three years with a mind to informing practice and setting a research agenda. Selected literature from earlier time periods is included to illuminate key findings and to help shape the proposed research agenda, especially in understudied areas.

Suitability of Google Scholar as a source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation. Review of the Literature

Halevi, G., Moed, H., & Bar-Ilan, J. (2017)
Suitability of Google Scholar as a source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation. Review of the Literature. 
Journal of Informetrics, 11(3), 823-834

As Google Scholar (GS) gains more ground as free scholarly literature retrieval source it’s becoming important to understand its quality and reliability in terms of scope and content.

Studies comparing GS to controlled databases such as Scopus, Web of Science (WOS) and others have been published almost since GS inception. These studies focus on its coverage, quality and ability to replace controlled databases as a source of reliable scientific literature. In addition, GS introduction of citations tracking and journal metrics have spurred a body of literature focusing on its ability to produce reliable metrics. In this article we aimed to review some studies in these areas in an effort to provide insights into GS ability to replace controlled databases in various subject areas. We reviewed 91 comparative articles from 2005 until 2016 which compared GS to various databases and especially Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus in an effort to determine whether GS can be used as a suitable source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation. Our results show that GS has significantly expanded its coverage through the years which makes it a powerful database of scholarly literature. However, the quality of resources indexed and overall policy still remains known. Caution should be exercised when relying on GS for citations and metrics mainly because it can be easily manipulated and its indexing quality still remains a challenge.

Highlights

• Google Scholar is constantly expanding and includes publishers content as well as content not available in controlled databases.

• Google Scholar provides citations counts that are broader than those covered by controlled databases.

• Google Scholar should be used with controlled databases especially when clinical information retrieval is required.

• Google Scholar is challenging when advanced searching is required.

• Google Scholar does not support data downloads and therefore is difficult to use as a sole bibliometric source.

• Google Scholar lacks quality control and clear indexing guidelines.

Faculty Use of Author Identifiers and Researcher Networking Tools

Tran, C. Y., & Lyon, J. A. (2017). 
Faculty Use of Author Identifiers and Researcher Networking Tools. 
College & Research Libraries, 78(2): 171-172

This cross-sectional survey focused on faculty use and knowledge of author identifiers and researcher networking systems, and professional use of social media, at a large state university. Results from 296 completed faculty surveys representing all disciplines (9.3% response rate) show low levels of awareness and variable resource preferences. The most utilized author identifier was ORCID while ResearchGate, LinkedIn, and Google Scholar were the top profiling systems. Faculty also reported some professional use of social media platforms. The survey data will be utilized to improve library services and develop intra-institutional collaborations in scholarly communication, research networking, and research impact.