Transcript Bibliometrics Toolkit Google Scholar and Publish or Perish • Google Scholar (GS) is one of three central tools (the others being ISI.

Bibliometrics Toolkit
Google Scholar and Publish or Perish
• Google Scholar (GS) is one of three central tools (the others being ISI and Scopus) used to generate bibliometrics for
researchers and for published research material
• Publish or Perish (PoP) works with Google Scholar data to automatically generate bibliometric metrics and analysis
• Google Scholar provides a very large data source for bibliometric analysis, but there is no information available as to precisely
what is indexed in the database
Google Scholar
Publish or Perish
About Google Scholar
About Publish or Perish
• Google Scholar (GS) is a specialised Google search engine designed to
retrieve scholarly data on the web
• Publish or Perish (PoP) is a piece of software which is free to download from
the web at http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm. It works with Google Scholar
data to generate metrics for authors, journals and articles
• It was launched in beta version in November 2004 and is still in its beta or
test phase
• GS searches publisher websites, pre-print repositories, university websites,
books, technical reports etc for scholarly information
•The software was developed by Anne-Wil Harzing, Professor in International
Management at the University of Melbourne
Some Advantages of GS for Bibliometrics
•As PoP uses GS data, the advantages and disadvantage of using GS should be
kept in mind when analysing PoP results. PoP is limited to the same search
functionality as GS
• A free alternative to fee-based citation databases like Scopus and Web of
Science (WoS)
•Using PoP you cannot view groups of journals together or categories of
journals as in Scopus and ISI
• Covers a diverse range of sources which can lead to higher citation counts for
some articles
•PoP results can be copied into Windows applications like Excel or saved as
text files for further analysis
• Includes material not indexed by other citation databases. As a result, it can
be better for disciplines poorly served by its competitors
•Results lists should be checked for errors and false hits deselected
• Includes books and this is advantageous for disciplines where monographs
are a principle research outlet, for example, in the arts and humanities
Example
An author search for PoP creator, Anne-Wil Harzing
• Better coverage of many conference proceedings than its competitors
• Provides citation counts for each document that it returns. You can click on
the citation count to view the individual citing documents making up this total
The metrics
Results list
Useful Metrics in Publish or Perish
Some Disadvantages of GS for Bibliometrics
About PoP Metrics
Key Metrics in PoP
• Does not provide a list of the journals and other material that it covers
• Does not indicate the timescale covered
• Covers some non-research level material e.g. course reading lists, student
projects etc
• Poorer coverage of print-only material
• Even the advanced search options are quite limited:
There is no way to distinguish between authors who have the same initials
It is impossible to conduct a comprehensive search for a journal which has
various title abbreviations
• Results often contain duplicates of the same article (usually as pre-prints and
post-prints) or even false hits which have to be merged or removed manually
Website: http://www.ndlr.ie/myri/
•Whether you are looking for authors, •Total number of papers
journals or articles, PoP returns the
• Total number of citations
same list of metrics
• Avg. no. of citations per paper
•The key metric provided for both
• Avg. no. of citations per author
authors and journals is the h-index
• Avg. no. of papers per author
•The h-index is currently the most
• Avg. no of citations per year
popular metric used to assess a
• Hirsch's h-index
researcher’s output
• Egghe's g-index
•The GS/PoP h-index for journals is a
useful alternative to the popular journal • The contemporary h-index
impact factor of ISI. As GS covers
• The age-weighted citation rate
material that ISI doesn’t, the h-index for • Individual h-index (2 types)
journals might be most useful for
disciplines that are not well served by ISI • Number of authors per paper
Last edited: 07 Mar 2011