how to find citation of research paper

Evaluating Scholarly Publications for Tenure and Promotion: How to find Citations to an Article

• Introduction
• How to find the SCImago Factor
• How to Find Impact Factors for Journals
• How to Find Eignefactors
• How to find Citations to an Article
• How to find your h-index
• Qualitative Measures
• Creative Activity
• Potential Risks

How do I Find Citations to a Journal Article?

More and more databases are tracking citations now. Check the database that you normally use to find articles for your research. If you have questions about whether a particular database includes citation counts, ask a librarian for help and we can help you determine if your favorite database has what you need.

Below are listed several databases that do include citation counts that you can use as examples. The first, the citation databases (science, social science, and humanities) are all included in the Web of Science and are a good starting point for all fields. Next come Google Scholar and SocIndex.

Web of Science

From the library's website ( http://www.sdstate.edu/library ), click Databases A-Z, and search for "Web of Science."

Select Cited Reference Search, and follow the on-screen tips and examples to complete your search.

Fill out as many fields as you feel necessary to find the article you want to find citations to.

From the list of results, you can see the number of times your article has been cited in the Web of Science, you can look at more information for a particular article, or you can choose several articles from the list.

If you click on View Record, you can see who has cited the article and create an alert that will send you an e-mail every time another citation to your articl is added to Web of Science.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar counts the number of times it finds citations to a particular article; however, there are some reasons to be cautious in using the Google Scholar citations. First, Google Scholar does not evaluate the publications it indexes in any way. Other indexes use some sort of criteria to determine what they index so there is some quality control within the index. Google scholar does have some criteria but they are not quality control type criteria. The number may not be an accurate reflection of the number of individual publications that cite your work either.

For instance, if an article cites your work and the citing article is written by 6 people. After a few months (assuming those 6 authors were researching using federal grants), the article can be put on their individual web pages so each of those 6 people put the article on their web page and the journal makes the article available in some way that Google finds it on the journal web site as well. Google Scholar will count 7 citations to your work even though only 1 article cited it.

With those caveats, Google will pick up citations that other indexes don't so it is a good index to use for citation counts if you are careful.

Go to http://google.scholar.com .

If you have a Google account, you can log into it and Google will make searching for your citations very easy.

Fill out your profile.

Choose the articles you have written from the list that is discoverd for authors with your name. (This is an instance where you should be grateful if your parents gave you an unusual name.)

Once you have chosen yourself as an author and added the articles Google identified as yours, you will be able to follow those articles.

Search Google Scholar for a particular article

You can search Google Scholar for a particular article as well. In the search box type the title of the article (you can use quotation marks around the title to make Google search it as a phrase but this is often unnecessary).

Find the article in the results list and the citations to it will be at the botom of the citation.

(Note that this is the same article as the example in the Web of Science instructions, WOS has 185 citations, Google lists 237. Once you have checked for unique citations, you can list both numbers.)

Articles Indexed in PubMed & NIH-funded Research

Relative Citation Ratio (RCR)  and Field Citation Ratio (FCR)   These metrics compare a given paper to others in the same research area or field. The papers need to be at least two years old.  Dimensions database : Search this app to find RCR and FCR   at https://app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication . 

Examples: Results in Dimensions for two papers

1. A highly-cited paper in a journal with Impact factor of 5.76 

2. A paper with below-average ctiations in a journal with impact factor of 5.36

While the IFs are not very different, the publications' impacts are quite different!

Our thanks to Dr. Sen Subramanian for supplying these links and examples.

• << Previous: How to Find Eignefactors
• Next: How to find your h-index >>
• Last Updated: Sep 1, 2023 3:00 PM
• URL: https://libguides.sdstate.edu/ScholarlyResearchEvidence

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• How do I do a citation search?
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What is a citation search?

Citation searching is a way to find relevant research in a field or subject by looking at what an article has referenced and who has referenced that article since it was published. For example, if you find a journal article from 2017, a citation search can show you both the articles it cited and the articles that have cited it since then. This helps you to see how research on the topic has evolved over time.

Why do a citation search?

There are several reasons to do a citation search:

• It can help uncover relevant articles from unexpected disciplines. 
• It can indicate how influential a particular idea, theory or study has become. If an article has been cited many times, it suggests it has been widely read and discussed. It could also be widely cited because it is considered controversial.
• It allows you to track an argument or idea over time.
• It helps you find other possible terms to use in your searches.
• It’s useful for putting together a bibliography or list of recommended readings.

How do you do a citation search?

• Identify a key article:  Start by finding a key article, author, or book that you’re studying, or one that is referenced in another article you’re looking at (usually something that has been in publication for at least one or two years). This will be the focus of your search.
• Find a database with a citation index:  Web of Science ,  Google Scholar ,  Academic Search Complete ,  ScienceDirect , and  Scopus  all include citation indexes.
• Carry out the citation search:  Use the title or author’s name to search for citations in the database.
• Review the results:  The search will provide a list of articles that have cited the same article, author, or book in their own reference lists. These articles likely discuss aspects of the subject you’re interested in.

By doing this, you are building a ‘web of knowledge’ for your topic. You may find useful articles in journals that seem unrelated to your main subject.

Example searches

Web of science.

Here is an example search from   Web of Science  using Jones, J.C. (1980)  Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures,  2nd edn, Wiley, as the target book citation:

• Access  Web of Science .
• Select ‘Cited reference Search’.
• Enter the name of your target author in the prescribed format (Jones JC) and the year of publication (1980).
• Select Search.
• You will then get a list of the books and papers published by Jones in 1980, which have been cited in the bibliographies of the articles in the Web of Science database.
• Select the check boxes in the list that match the work you are interested in (in this case Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures). Then select 'See Results'. to see who has cited it.
• To view more information about any of these articles click on the article title.
• To check whether an article is available in full text via the OU Library select 'OU Full Text?'.

For a guide to using the database, you can access the  Web of Science Platform Training Resources .

Google Scholar

Here is an example search from   Google Scholar   using Jones, J.C. (1980)  Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures,  2nd edn, Wiley, as the target book citation:

• Go to  Google Scholar .
• Search for the text you are interested in e.g. ‘Jones Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures 1980’.
• Under the entry for that text, follow the ‘Cited by [number of citations]’ link.
• This presents you with a list of other texts that have cited the text you specified.

You can set up Google Scholar to enable seamless access to journal articles subscribed to by the OU Library. You can find instructions on how to do this, on the  Access eresources using Google Scholar  page.

Citation searching tips

To get the best out of your citation searches:

• Use multiple databases : Different databases may index different sets of journals and articles, so using more than one can provide a more thorough search.
• Refine your search : Use filters such as publication date, subject area, and document type to narrow down the results to the most relevant citations.
• Stay updated : Some databases allow you to set alerts to get notified about new research on your topic.
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Cited Reference Search

Search for records that have cited a published work, and discover how a known idea or innovation has been confirmed, applied, improved, extended, or corrected. Find out who’s citing your research and the impact your work is having on other researchers in the world.

In the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, you can use cited reference search to find articles that refer to or include an illustration of a work of art or a music score; these references are called implicit citations .

• You may also search on Cited Year(s), Cited Volume, Cited Issue, Cited Pages, Cited Title, or Cited DOI
• Click Search; results from the cited reference index that include the work you’re searching appears on a table. Every reference on the cited reference index has been cited by at least one article indexed in the Web of Science. The first author of a cited work always displays in the Cited Author column. If the cited author you specified in step 1 is not the primary author, then the name of author you specified follows the name of the first author (click Show all authors). If you retrieve too many hits, return to the cited reference search page and add criteria for Cited Year, Cited Volume, Cited Issue, or Cited Page.
• cited reference is not a source article in the Web of Science
• reference may contain incomplete or inaccurate information, and can’t be linked to a source article
• reference may refer to a document from a publication outside the timespan of your subscription; for example, if the article was published in 1992, but your subscription only gives you access to 20 years of data
• cited item may refer to a document from a publication not covered by a database in your subscription
• Click Search to view your results.

Click View abbreviation list to see the abbreviations of journal and conference proceedings titles used as cited works; this list will open in a new browser tab.

When you complete a cited reference search, the number of citing items you retrieve may be smaller than the number listed in the Citing Articles column if your institution's subscription does not include all years of the database. In other words, the count in the Citing Articles column is not limited by your institution's subscription. However, your access to records in the product is limited by your institution's subscription.

• Enter the name of the first author of a multi-authored article or book
• Enter an abbreviated journal title followed by an asterisk or the first one or two significant words of a book title followed by an asterisk.
• Try searching for the cited reference without entering a cited year in order to retrieve variations of the same cited reference. You can always return to the Cited Reference Search page and enter a cited year if you get too many references.
• When searching for biblical references, enter Bible in the Cited Author field and the name of the book ( Corinthinans* , Matthew* Leviticus *, etc.) in the Cited Work field. Ensure that you use the asterisk (*) wildcard in your search.

Follow these steps to find articles that have cited Brown, M.E. and Calvin, W.M. Evidence for crystalline water and ammonia ices on Pluto's satellite Charon. Science . 287 (5450): 107-109. January 7, 2000:

• On the Cited Reference Search page, enter Brown M* in the Cited Author field.
• Enter Science* in the Cited Work field.
• Click Search to go to the Cited Reference Search table. This page shows all the results from the Web of Science cited reference index that matched the query.
• Page through the results to find this reference:

• Select the check box to the left of the reference.
• Click the See Results button to go to the Cited Reference Search Results page to see the list of articles that cite the article by Brown and Calvin.

Every cited reference in the Cited Reference Index contains enough information to uniquely identify the document. Because only essential bibliographic information is captured, and because author names and source publication titles are unified as much as possible, the same reference cited in two different records should appear the same way in the database. This unification is what makes possible the Times Cited number on the Full Record page.

However, not all references to the same publication can be unified. As a consequence, a cited reference may have variations in the product.

For example, consider these variations of a reference to an article by A.J. Bard published in volume 374 of Nature:

The first reference contains the correct volume number and other bibliographic information. The View Record link takes you to the Full Record, which has a Times Cited count of 31.

The second reference contains a different volume number and it does not have a View Record link. Because a journal cannot have two different volume numbers in the same publication year, it is obvious that this is an incorrect reference to the same article.

Click Export at the top of the Cited Reference Search table to export the cited reference search results to Excel.

Articles indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded cite books, patents, and other types of publications in addition to other articles. You can do a cited reference search for a patent to find journal articles that have cited it.

If you know the patent number, enter it in the Cited Work field. If you do not know the patent number, try entering the name of the first listed inventor or patent assignee in the Cited Author field. For example, to find references to U.S. patent 4096196-A, enter 4096196 in the Cited Work field. If you also subscribe to Derwent Innovations Index and the patent is included in the Derwent database, the patents you find in the citation index will be linked to the corresponding full patent records in Derwent Innovations Index.

Self-citations refer to cited references that contain an author name that matches the name of the author of a citing article.

You may want to eliminate self-citations from the results of a Cited Reference Search by combining a Cited Reference Search with a search by the source author.

• Perform a Cited Reference Search to find items that cite the works of a particular author. Ensure that you complete both steps of a Cited Reference Search.
• Go to the search page. Enter the name of the same author in the Author field. Click the Search button.
• Go to the advanced search page.
• Combine the two searches you just completed in a Boolean NOT expression (for example, #1 NOT #2 ). The results of the Search (the items written by the author) should be the set on the right-hand side of the operator.

Articles indexed in the product cite books, patents, and other types of publications in addition to other articles. You can do a cited reference search on a book to find journal articles that have cited it.

You should identify a book by entering the name of the first listed author in the Cited Author field and the first word or words of the title in the Cited Work field. Many cited works are abbreviated. If you are not sure how a word has been spelled or abbreviated, enter the first few letters of the word, followed by an asterisk. For example, to search for records of articles that cite Edith Hamilton's book Mythology , you would enter Hamilton E* in the Cited Author field and Myth* in the Cited Work field.

Do not enter a year in the Cited Year field. Authors often cite a particular edition of a book, and the cited year is the year of the edition they are citing. Generally, you want to find all articles that cite a book, regardless of the particular edition cited.

For example, enter the following data on the Cited Reference Search page, and then click Search .

CITED AUTHOR Tuchman BW

CITED WORK Guns*

CITED YEAR 1962

Note the number of references that are retrieved. Now repeat the search using the following data:

CITED AUTHOR Tuchman B*

See how many more references you retrieved? Notice that the author has been cited as Tuchman B as well as Tuchman BW. Also, notice how many different cited years and cited page numbers there are for the same work.

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• Knowledge Base
• Citing sources

How to Cite Sources | Citation Generator & Quick Guide

Citing your sources is essential in  academic writing . Whenever you quote or paraphrase a source (such as a book, article, or webpage), you have to include a  citation crediting the original author.

Failing to properly cite your sources counts as plagiarism , since you’re presenting someone else’s ideas as if they were your own.

The most commonly used citation styles are APA and MLA. The free Scribbr Citation Generator is the quickest way to cite sources in these styles. Simply enter the URL, DOI, or title, and we’ll generate an accurate, correctly formatted citation.

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Table of contents

When do you need to cite sources, which citation style should you use, in-text citations, reference lists and bibliographies.

Scribbr Citation Generator

Other useful citation tools

Citation examples and full guides, frequently asked questions about citing sources.

Citations are required in all types of academic texts. They are needed for several reasons:

• To avoid plagiarism by indicating when you’re taking information from another source
• To give proper credit to the author of that source
• To allow the reader to consult your sources for themselves

A citation is needed whenever you integrate a source into your writing. This usually means quoting or paraphrasing:

• To quote a source , copy a short piece of text word for word and put it inside quotation marks .
• To paraphrase a source , put the text into your own words. It’s important that the paraphrase is not too close to the original wording. You can use the paraphrasing tool if you don’t want to do this manually.

Citations are needed whether you quote or paraphrase, and whatever type of source you use. As well as citing scholarly sources like books and journal articles, don’t forget to include citations for any other sources you use for ideas, examples, or evidence. That includes websites, YouTube videos , and lectures .

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Usually, your institution (or the journal you’re submitting to) will require you to follow a specific citation style, so check your guidelines or ask your instructor.

In some cases, you may have to choose a citation style for yourself. Make sure to pick one style and use it consistently:

• APA Style is widely used in the social sciences and beyond.
• MLA style is common in the humanities.
• Chicago notes and bibliography , common in the humanities
• Chicago author-date , used in the (social) sciences
• There are many other citation styles for different disciplines.

If in doubt, check with your instructor or read other papers from your field of study to see what style they follow.

In most styles, your citations consist of:

• Brief in-text citations at the relevant points in the text
• A reference list or bibliography containing full information on all the sources you’ve cited

In-text citations most commonly take the form of parenthetical citations featuring the last name of the source’s author and its year of publication (aka author-date citations).

An alternative to this type of in-text citation is the system used in numerical citation styles , where a number is inserted into the text, corresponding to an entry in a numbered reference list.

There are also note citation styles , where you place your citations in either footnotes or endnotes . Since they’re not embedded in the text itself, these citations can provide more detail and sometimes aren’t accompanied by a full reference list or bibliography.

A reference list (aka “Bibliography” or “Works Cited,” depending on the style) is where you provide full information on each of the sources you’ve cited in the text. It appears at the end of your paper, usually with a hanging indent applied to each entry.

The information included in reference entries is broadly similar, whatever citation style you’re using. For each source, you’ll typically include the:

• Author name
• Publication date
• Container (e.g., the book an essay was published in, the journal an article appeared in)
• Location (e.g., a URL or DOI , or sometimes a physical location)

The exact information included varies depending on the source type and the citation style. The order in which the information appears, and how you format it (e.g., capitalization, use of italics) also varies.

Most commonly, the entries in your reference list are alphabetized by author name. This allows the reader to easily find the relevant entry based on the author name in your in-text citation.

In numerical citation styles, the entries in your reference list are numbered, usually based on the order in which you cite them. The reader finds the right entry based on the number that appears in the text.

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Because each style has many small differences regarding things like italicization, capitalization , and punctuation , it can be difficult to get every detail right. Using a citation generator can save you a lot of time and effort.

Scribbr offers citation generators for both APA and MLA style. Both are quick, easy to use, and 100% free, with no ads and no registration required.

Just input a URL or DOI or add the source details manually, and the generator will automatically produce an in-text citation and reference entry in the correct format. You can save your reference list as you go and download it when you’re done, and even add annotations for an annotated bibliography .

Once you’ve prepared your citations, you might still be unsure if they’re correct and if you’ve used them appropriately in your text. This is where Scribbr’s other citation tools and services may come in handy:

Plagiarism Checker

Citation Checker

Citation Editing

Plagiarism means passing off someone else’s words or ideas as your own. It’s a serious offense in academia. Universities use plagiarism checking software to scan your paper and identify any similarities to other texts.

When you’re dealing with a lot of sources, it’s easy to make mistakes that could constitute accidental plagiarism. For example, you might forget to add a citation after a quote, or paraphrase a source in a way that’s too close to the original text.

Using a plagiarism checker yourself before you submit your work can help you spot these mistakes before they get you in trouble. Based on the results, you can add any missing citations and rephrase your text where necessary.

Try out the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker for free, or check out our detailed comparison of the best plagiarism checkers available online.

Scribbr Plagiarism Checker

Scribbr’s Citation Checker is a unique AI-powered tool that automatically detects stylistic errors and inconsistencies in your in-text citations. It also suggests a correction for every mistake.

Currently available for APA Style, this is the fastest and easiest way to make sure you’ve formatted your citations correctly. You can try out the tool for free below.

If you need extra help with your reference list, we also offer a more in-depth Citation Editing Service.

Our experts cross-check your in-text citations and reference entries, make sure you’ve included the correct information for each source, and improve the formatting of your reference page.

If you want to handle your citations yourself, Scribbr’s free Knowledge Base provides clear, accurate guidance on every aspect of citation. You can see citation examples for a variety of common source types below:

And you can check out our comprehensive guides to the most popular citation styles:

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

The abbreviation “ et al. ” (Latin for “and others”) is used to shorten citations of sources with multiple authors.

“Et al.” is used in APA in-text citations of sources with 3+ authors, e.g. (Smith et al., 2019). It is not used in APA reference entries .

Use “et al.” for 3+ authors in MLA in-text citations and Works Cited entries.

Use “et al.” for 4+ authors in a Chicago in-text citation , and for 10+ authors in a Chicago bibliography entry.

The Scribbr Citation Generator is developed using the open-source Citation Style Language (CSL) project and Frank Bennett’s citeproc-js . It’s the same technology used by dozens of other popular citation tools, including Mendeley and Zotero.

You can find all the citation styles and locales used in the Scribbr Citation Generator in our publicly accessible repository on Github .

APA format is widely used by professionals, researchers, and students in the social and behavioral sciences, including fields like education, psychology, and business.

Be sure to check the guidelines of your university or the journal you want to be published in to double-check which style you should be using.

MLA Style  is the second most used citation style (after APA ). It is mainly used by students and researchers in humanities fields such as literature, languages, and philosophy.

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Public Access

Google Scholar Profiles

Google Scholar Profiles provide a simple way for authors to showcase their academic publications. You can check who is citing your articles, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name, e.g., richard feynman .

Best of all, it's quick to set up and simple to maintain - even if you have written hundreds of articles, and even if your name is shared by several different scholars. You can add groups of related articles, not just one article at a time; and your citation metrics are computed and updated automatically as Google Scholar finds new citations to your work on the web. You can choose to have your list of articles updated automatically or review the updates yourself, or to manually update your articles at any time.

Set up your Google Scholar Profile

Setting up your profile

Start here. It's quick and free.

• First, sign in to your Google account, or create one if you don't yet have one. We recommend that you use a personal account, not an account at your institution, so that you can keep your profile for as long as you wish.
• Once you've signed in to your Google account, open the Scholar profile sign up form , confirm the spelling of your name, enter your affiliation, interests, etc. We recommend that you also enter your university email address; this would make your profile eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search results.
• On the next page, you'll see groups of articles written by people with names similar to yours. Add all articles that you have written; keep in mind your articles may be in several different groups, and some groups may occasionally include articles by several different authors. If you publish under several different names, you may need to do several searches to add all your articles.
• Once you're done with adding articles, it will ask you what to do when the article data changes in Google Scholar. You can either have the updates applied to your profile automatically, or you can choose to review them beforehand. In either case, you can always go to your profile and make changes by hand.
• Finally, you will see your profile. This is a good time to add a few finishing touches - upload your professional looking photo, visit your university email inbox and click on the verification link, double check the list of articles, and, once you're completely satisfied, make your profile public. Voila - it's now eligible to appear in Google Scholar when someone searches for your name!

Select the "Add articles" option from the menu. Search for your articles using titles, keywords, or your name. Your citation metrics will update immediately to account for the articles you added.

If your search doesn't find the right article, click "Add article manually". Then, type in the title, the authors, etc., and click "Save". Keep in mind that citations to manually added articles may not appear in your profile for a few days.

To add a group of related articles, click "Add article groups". If you have written articles under different names, with multiple groups of colleagues, or in different journals, you may need to select multiple groups. Your citation metrics will update immediately to account for the groups you added.

If the menu doesn't appear, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Alas, we have no way of knowing which articles are really yours . Author names are often abbreviated and different people sometimes share similar names. We use a statistical model to try to tell different authors apart but such automatic processes are not always accurate. The best way to fix this is to look through the articles in your profile and remove the ones that were written by others.

Select the articles you would like to remove and then click the "Delete" button.

If the article checkboxes don't appear, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Deleted articles are moved to the Trash. To view articles in the Trash, select the "View trash" option from the menu. To restore an article from the Trash, select the article and click the "Restore" button.

Click the title of the article and then click the "Edit" button. When you finish your changes, click the "Save" button.

If the "Edit" button doesn't appear, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

If you've made substantial changes to the article, please keep the following in mind.

• The list of "Scholar articles" at the bottom of the page may no longer match the article you've edited. We recommend that you review this list and "unmerge" the Scholar articles that no longer correspond to your article. Scholar articles affect the computation of your "Cited by" counts and citation metrics.
• As with manual additions of articles, it may take several days for all citations to the edited article to be collected in your profile. You can speed up the process by adding the appropriate article from Google Scholar and then merging it with your version; then, your citation metrics will update right away.
• It's possible that the article you've edited was already in your profile as a separate record. We recommend that you merge duplicate records - click the "Title" column header to sort your articles by title, select the checkboxes next to the duplicate entries, which should now be adjacent, and then click the "Merge" button.

Select both versions of the article and click the "Merge" button. You will then see both citations for the article listed. Select the best citation to the article (you can edit it later if you wish) and click "Merge". This will merge the two versions. Your citation metrics will automatically update to count the versions you've merged as a single article, not two different articles.

Nope, the "Cited by" count after the merge is the number of papers that cite the merged article. One of these probably cites both versions that you've merged; the 27+4=31 formula counts this citation twice. But if the count has dropped below 27... ugh, please do let us know.

The ∗ indicates that the "Cited by" count includes citations that might not match this article. It is an estimate made automatically by a computer program. You can check these citations by clicking on the article's title and looking for "Scholar articles" with a ∗ next to their title.

Making your profile public

Your profile is private and visible only to you until and unless you make your profile public.

Click the "Edit" button next to your name, check the "Make my profile public" box, and click "Save".

You can share the URL displayed by the browser. It looks like this: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ID&hl=en …where ID identifies your Google Scholar profile. You can link to it from your homepage, email it to colleagues, or share it on social media. The link only works if the profile is public, and only lets other people see the profile but not make changes to it.

Click the "Edit" button next to your name, uncheck the "Make my profile public" box, and click "Save".

You also need to add a verified email address at your university or institution.

To be eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search results, your profile needs to be public and needs to have a verified email address at your university (non-institutional email addresses, such as gmail.com, hotmail.com, aol.com, yahoo.com, qq.com, etc., are not suitable for this purpose). To add a verified email to your profile, click the "Edit" button next to your name, add your email address at your institution and click "Save". We will send you an email message with a verification link. Once you click on this link, the email address will be marked verified. Your profile will now be eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search results.

Rest assured, we will not display your email address on your public profile. Nor will we sell it, trade it, or use it to send you email unrelated to Google Scholar.

Exploring citations to your articles

Click the "Cited by" number for the article.

Click the title of the article.

Click the "Follow" button next to your name, check the "New citations to my articles" box, and click "Done". We'll then email you when newly published articles cite any of the works in your profile.

Click the "Cited by" number for your article and then click the envelope icon in the left sidebar. Then we'll email you when newly published articles cite yours.

Google Scholar considers this article the same as another article in your profile. We display the "Cited by" count next to both of the duplicates, but we only count them once in your citation metrics.

We recommend that you merge the duplicates - select both articles and click the "Merge" button.

Probably not. We compute two versions, All and Recent, of three metrics - h-index, i10-index and the total number of citations. While there's no shortage of other reasonable metrics, the incremental usefulness of adding each number generally goes down, while the user confusion generally goes up.

Your "Cited by" counts come from the Google Scholar index. You can change the articles in your profile, but citations to them are computed and updated automatically as we update Google Scholar.

To change the "Cited by" counts in your profile, you would need to have them updated in Google Scholar. Google Scholar generally reflects the state of the web as it is currently visible to our search robots and to the majority of users. If some of the citations to your article are not included, chances are that the citing articles are not accessible to our search robots or are formatted in ways that make it difficult for our indexing algorithms to identify their bibliographic data or references.

To fix this, you'll need to identify the specific citing articles with indexing problems and work with the publisher of these articles to make the necessary changes (see our inclusion guidelines for details). For most publishers, it usually takes 6-9 months for the changes to be reflected in Google Scholar; for very large publishers, it can take much longer.

Many research funding agencies promote broad access to funded research by mandating that articles describing the research should be publicly available. The Public Access section of a Google Scholar profile contains the articles that are expected to be publicly available based on funding agency mandates. For each article, you can view the applicable mandates and see if it is publicly available. If the article has a publicly available version, a link marked [PDF] or [HTML] appears on the right hand side.

An article can be publicly available from several sources including its publisher, an institutional repository, a research area specific repository and others. The Google Scholar indexing system tries to include all publicly accessible versions that follow our inclusion guidelines . For your own profile, you can update the list of articles and make corrections. You can also make an article publicly available by uploading a PDF of the article to your own Google Drive.

The Public Access Mandates table presents summary statistics about public access mandates for different funding agencies. For each funding agency, you can view the level of public availability of mandated articles overall and over several recent years.

The Google Scholar indexing system automatically extracts funding information from the acknowledgement sections of articles. You can see the funding acknowledgement for an article by clicking on its title on the public access page.

Public access mandates usually specify that funded articles should be publicly available within a given period of time (referred to as the "embargo") after publication. You can see the embargo period for an article by clicking on its title on the public access page.

Your profile should only include articles that you wrote. To remove an article that you didn't write, click "REVIEW", then "MAKE A CORRECTION", select "I'm not an author of this article" from the list of options and click "DONE". The article will be removed from your public access page. It will also be deleted from your profile. If you don't see "MAKE A CORRECTION", sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Click "REVIEW", then "MAKE A CORRECTION", select "This article wasn't funded by any of these agencies" from the list of options and click "DONE". The article will be removed from your public access page. If you don't see "MAKE A CORRECTION", sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Click "REVIEW", then "MAKE A CORRECTION", select "This article's publication date is incorrect" from the list of options, enter the correct date and click "DONE". If the new publication date is outside the scope of the mandate, the article will be removed from your public access page. This will also update the publication date in your profile. If you don't see "MAKE A CORRECTION", sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

The simplest thing would be to ask your coauthor to make the article publicly available. Once the publicly available version is included in the Google Scholar index, your public access page will be automatically updated.

You can also indicate this on your public access page. To do this, click "REVIEW", then "MAKE A CORRECTION", select "I'm not the responsible author" from the list of options, select the authors that are responsible for making the article publicly available and then click "DONE". The article will then be listed in the "Recused" section on your public access page. If you don't see "MAKE A CORRECTION", sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile. Once the article is publicly available from another source, it will automatically move to the "Available" section.

The star indicates that one or more of your mandated articles is not yet publicly available and that you have recused yourself from making them available.

The Public Access section is only available for public profiles. If your profile is currently private, click the "Edit" button next to your name, check the "Make my profile public" box, and click "SAVE". If the "Edit" button doesn't appear, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

If your profile is already public and you still don't see the Public Access section, the Google Scholar indexing system has not yet identified any articles with public access mandates in your profile.

The Google Scholar indexing system tries to include all publicly accessible versions that follow our inclusion guidelines . Please contact your publisher and ask them to make sure that the publicly available version is accessible to our search robots.

You can also make the article publicly available by uploading a PDF of the article to your own Google Drive. To do that, click the "UPLOAD PDF" button next to the article on your public access page. If you don't see the "UPLOAD PDF" button, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile. Please upload only articles that you've written and have the rights to share.

The Google Scholar indexing system tries to include all publicly accessible versions that follow our inclusion guidelines . Please contact the repository administrators and ask them to make sure that the article is accessible to our search robots.

You can also make the article publicly available by uploading a PDF of the article to your own Google Drive . To do that, click the "UPLOAD PDF" button next to the article on your public access page. If you don't see the "UPLOAD PDF" button, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile. Please upload only articles that you've written and have the rights to share.

Yes, the uploaded article will be linked from your profile. It will also be eligible for inclusion in the Google Scholar index.

Click on the title of the article, and then click "UPDATE PDF". Follow the prompts to upload a PDF file from your computer. The link in your profile will be updated immediately. If the original version was indexed in Google Scholar, it will be replaced in a few days.

Note, the original uploaded article will still be in the "Public research articles" folder in your Google Drive . If you wish, you can delete it from there as well. If you don't see the original article or the 'Public research articles' folder in your Google Drive, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Go to the "Public research articles" folder in your Google Drive , and delete the article from there. The link to the article will disappear from your profile and the Google Scholar index in a few days.

If you don't see the "Public research articles" folder or the article in question in your Google Drive, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

This error message means that your domain's administrators have disabled public sharing through Google Drive possibly as a part of organizational policy. Please contact your domain's administrators for assistance and clarification.

Public Access Reports for Agencies

In addition to reviewing public access for all your articles, you can also view and export public access reports for individual funding agencies. You can view an agency-specific report by clicking the agency’s name on the left-hand side of the Public Access page on desktops, or by selecting the agency in the dropdown list on the top-left side of the page on mobile phones.

Funding agencies can require articles to be available at a particular repository (e.g., PubMed Central), at a group of repositories (any subject or institutional repository), or anywhere on the web. Agency-specific reports take these requirements into account. When an article is available at a suitable location, it will be linked on the right. If you don’t see the link for an available article, you can provide the link to us. For agencies that specify a particular repository, there is also a link to submit your article to that repository. You can also fix errors - remove articles, correct publication dates, or update funding information.

Updates to your profile

You don't need to do anything! Your citation metrics and citation graph will be automatically updated whenever Google Scholar is updated.

Select "Configure article updates" from the menu. Choose the automatic updates setting and click "Update settings". Your profile will be automatically updated when Google Scholar is updated.

This setting only controls the updates to your list of articles. It does not control the updates to your "Cited by" counts and citation metrics - those are always updated to reflect the current state of the web.

To add a missing article to your profile, select "Add articles" from the menu and search for it. If you can't find your article in Google Scholar, select "Add article manually" to enter its bibliographic record by hand.

Select "Configure article updates" from the menu. Choose the confirmation email setting and click "Update settings". When we identify suitable updates for your profile, we'll send you an email message so that you can review and apply the updates.

You don't need to do anything. Automated updates will not make changes to an article that you have edited.

Reviewing updates to your profile

This happens when the Google Scholar search index changes, and it now considers this entry a duplicate of some other article in your profile. This could happen, e.g., if the publisher re-formats their papers or fixes a typo. We recommend that you accept this suggestion. You can, of course, choose to keep duplicate entries in your profile, but only one of them will be counted towards your citation metrics.

This happens when the Google Scholar search index has changed, and we have been unable to match an article in your profile with the new index. Most of the time, this is because it was considered to be a duplicate of some other article in your profile, but we weren't able to determine which one. Occasionally, the article may have been removed from Google Scholar entirely, e.g., because it's no longer available on the web, or because articles that reference it have become unavailable to our search robots.

To check if the article is a duplicate, go to your profile, click the "Title" column header to sort by title, and look for the article in question. If the same article is indeed listed multiple times, you can safely accept the suggestion to delete the unmatched entry. However, if it isn't a duplicate entry, you can choose to keep it in your profile. Though, since it is not matched in Google Scholar, its "Cited by" count will be zero.

Note that your decision to keep an unmatched entry in your profile will not reinstate the entry in Google Scholar. See the inclusion guidelines for help on including your articles in Google Scholar.

General questions

It's under " My profile " on top of the page or in the side drawer. If this link shows a profile creation form, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile and try again.

Select the articles you'd like to export - or check the box next to the "Title" column header to select all articles in your profile - and click the "Export" button. Follow the prompts to download a BibTeX, EndNote, RefMan, or CSV file.

Click the column header labeled "Year".

Click the "Edit" button next to your name, paste the URL into the "Homepage" field, and click "Save".

If the profile is yours, sign in to the Google account that you used to create it, and follow the instructions in the Setup section to make corrections. You can add, delete, edit, and merge articles in your own profile.

If the profile is someone else's, it's best to contact its author and ask them to make a correction.

Note that profile owners can't change their "Cited-by" counts, and that updating an article in a profile does not change it in the Google Scholar search results. To make those kinds of corrections, you usually need to talk to the article's publisher; please refer to the inclusion guidelines .

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Subject Guide

What is citation searching?

• Basic citation searching involves tracking references that have cited, or listed in its bibliography, an article, book, or book chapter.
• This guide will help you find WHO HAS CITED a given article, book, book chapter, or other publication or author - also known as cited reference searching.
• To locate newer material related to a given publication or author.
• To see who is citing one (or all) of your publication. 
• To show the impact of your work by seeing who is citing you. To find other researchers in a field.

Where to do citation searching?

Many databases have a "cited by" link.

Top ones for Education field are:

• Google Scholar Searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

• PsycINFO This database contains more than one million citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, dissertations and technical reports, all in the field of psychology. It also includes information about the psychological aspects of related disciplines such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business and law. Journal coverage, which spans from 1887 to present, includes international material selected from more than 1,700 periodicals in over 35 languages.
• JSTOR Full-text digital archive of over 2600 scholarly journals, especially strong in Social Sciences, Humanities, Economics, and Mathematics.

Other Citation Searching Databases

Metrics toolkit.

Harzing's Publish or Perish

This free downloadable tool uses Google Scholar data to create citation analysis reports by author or journal name. Citation counts for specific articles are given, as well as h-index for the author or journal.

• Tutorial on Harzing's Publish Or Perish
• Download software for Windows
• Download for Mac
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• Last Updated: Aug 13, 2024 12:17 PM
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