Google Scholar Citation 2015 report

I think that the best way to inaugurate a publication on academic web sites is to post a detailed analysis on one of the most relevant scholarly platforms. Google Scholar Citations (GSC) is a Google Scholar’s service that facilitates the creation of a brief publishing curriculum from documents indexed in Google Scholar. Since December 2011, I have annually gathered exhaustive samples of Google Scholar profiles, extracting the most complete list of profiles with their identification data, interests, collaborators and bibliometrics indicators --Needless to say, that those data are available for collaboration. The last crawler was carried out between December 2014 (crawling) and January 2015 (harvesting). Now, this post resumes the information retrieved in this crawler as a current report on the coverage of Google Scholar Citations.
596,105 profiles were obtained in this last sample, 101% more than in 2014 (296,205). This growth percentage evidences a good health for Google Scholar Citations because the adscription of new profiles is doubled in just one year. In spite of this, figures are far from other successful scholarly sites such as Academia.edu (+1,2 millions) or ResearchGate (5 millions). The growing rate of GSC predicts a soon comparison with other social platforms. Although GSC cannot be actually considered a social network, the way in which the users joint the service is comparable with an academic social network.

Labels

Table 1. The ten most frequent labels

According to the labels that each researcher includes in his/her profile, these have increased a 204% since January 2014. Among the most predominant terms we find keywords related with Computer and Information Sciences. Thus, the most frequent keywords are machine learning (.7%), artificial intelligence (.5%) and bioinformatics (.4%). Only, neuroscience (.3%), ecology (.3%) and nanotechnology (.2%) are terms linked to other disciplines. These results are similar to the already observed ones in 2011 (Ortega and Aguillo, 2012), so it informs us that the population in GSC has not changed too much in thematic terms. However, the label that most increases its presence is neuroscience (212%), which suggests that new member from different disciplines to Computer Sciences are joint up with GSC.

Organizations

Table 2. The ten organizations with most profiles

By organizations, universities with more profiles are Universidade de Sao Paulo (1.08%), Harvard University (.6%) and Stanford University (.47%). It is interesting to notice that among the first ten organizations outstand two Brazilian universities, Universidade de Sao Paulo (1.08%) and Universidade Estadual Paulista (.44%) which evidences the strong presence of Brazilian profiles in GSC. Apart of this, the list prevails universities from United States (6), United Kingdom (1) and Canada (1). According to the 2014 sample, the organizations that more increase their profiles are Stanford University (256%) and Harvard University (184%), while the University of Michigan (56%) and Universidade Estadual Paulista (52%) are the ones that less grow.
Observing bibliometric indicators, universities with a better citations/papers ratio are Harvard University (41.5 citations per document) and Stanford University (41.4 citations per document). Contrarily, Universidade Estadual Paulista (6.6) and Universidade de Sao Paulo (10.2) are the ones with the worst rates.

Countries

Table 3. The ten countries with most profiles (*2010, **2008)

Figure 1. Map of profiles by country

Finally, the country distribution shows that United States (19.8%) is the country with most profiles, far away from United Kingdom (5.6%) and Brazil (4%). As in organizations table, country table confirms the strong presence of Brazilian profiles, which climb to the third position in GSC. According to 2014, the countries that undergo a larger increase are India (807%), Spain (419%) and Germany (375%), while Brazil (134%) slows down its growth beside United States (142%) and United Kingdom (163%).
To normalize these percentages, I have developed an indicator to measure the penetration degree of GSC in a country. It is the result of divide the number of profiles by the total amount of researchers in each country (UNESCO, 2015). Thus, the countries with a highest penetration are Australia (21%), followed by Brazil (16.5%) and Italy (16.2%). Whereas GSC is less successful in Germany (4.3%) and France (5.5%). However, these figures have to be cautiously considered because data on Australia are from 2008, and Brazil and India from 2010. Therefore, the penetration of these countries could be lower.
Summarizing, we can extract some conclusions on these data:

• GSC is still growing, doubling its population in a year. But this growth is still far from other academic sites such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu.
• The most frequent labels are related with Computer and Information Sciences, although it is observed a quick increase of terms from Medicine (neurosciences), Biology (ecology) and Materials Science (nanotechnology).
• Universidade de Sao Paulo is still the organization with more profiles, spite of American universities such as Harvard University and Stanford emerge again with force.
• United States is the country with most profiles, with a strong increase of Indian profiles. Australia and Brazil are the countries where GSC is most popular, while Germany and France show less interest in this service.

References

Ortega, J. L., Aguillo, I. F. (2012),Science is all in the eye of the beholder: keyword maps in Google Scholar Citations, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(12): 2370-2377

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2015). http://data.uis.unesco.org

Please, cite this post as: Ortega, J. L. (2015). Google Scholar Citations 2015 report. The Scientific Web Observer. http://swobserver.blogspot.com.es/2015/02/google-scholar-citation-2015-report.html