Tag Archives: Managing professional Identity

Promoting your research using Google Scholar for your own citations

Google Scholar

My Citations is a  feature which provides a simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles. You can check who is citing your publications, create graphs of your citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it appears in Google Scholar results when people search for your name .

"Bibliography" by Alexandre Duret-Lutz. C BY-SA. Flickr.
“Bibliography” by Alexandre Duret-Lutz. C BY-SA. Flickr.

It is very 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 even choose to have your list of articles updated automatically – but you can also choose to review the updates yourself, or to manually update your articles at any time.

First, create a regular Google account, or sign in to the one you already have. It is a good idea to use a personal account, not your university account, so that you can keep your profile for as long as you wish, even if you change jobs.

1. Once you’ve signed in to your Google account go to Google Scholar, select the link to My Citations. There are three stages to complete.

The Citations sign up form will ask you to confirm the spelling of your name, and to enter your affiliation, interests, etc. We recommend that you also enter your university email address, because that would make your profile eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search results.

 

2. On the next page, you’ll see groups of articles written by people with names similar to yours.
Click “Add all articles” next to each article group that is yours, or “See all articles” to add specific articles from that group. I
f you don’t see your articles in these groups, click “Search articles” to do a regular Google Scholar search, and then add your articles one at a time.
3. Once you’re finished adding articles, you will be asked 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 make a few finishing touches – upload your professional looking photo, visit your email inbox and click on the verification link, double check the list of articles, and, once you’re completely satisfied, make your profile public.
5. Once your profile is public you can be searched for by name. Your profile will display the articles which have been collected by Google Scholar, the number of citations they have received (citations indices), and a map of your H-index.

You can also search for others by name, or by name of institution or place in the My citations screen: (NB note also the My Citations – Help feature). Run a search on ‘Royal Holloway’ (or any other institution) and see who else has registered on My Citations.

If you notice some of your articles are not in your Google Citations profile, you can sign in to your Citations profile, and select ‘Add” option from the pull down Actions menu. Search for your articles using titles, keywords, or your name. To add one article at a time, click ‘Search articles’ and then ‘Add article’ next to the article you wish to add. Your citation metrics will update immediately.

If your search doesn’t find the right article, click ‘Add Article manually’. Then, type in the title, authors etc and click ‘Save. (NB Citations to manually added articles may not appear in your profile for a while).

Helen

Tips on privacy and managing professional identities

facebook privateSomething which always causes concern when people mention social media or Web 2.0 is privacy and managing a professional personal balance.

One aspect of privacy is the information we choose to share and how that reflects on our professional identities.

 

This presentation from the University of Bath gives a very good overview of how to manage your professional identity:

Not everybody will want to be totally anonymous but in our online world it is important to be informed about privacy.

Take note of the privacy options available and adjust the settings where necessary when signing up to a new service. Many sites will give you a variety of options allowing you to set the privacy settings at a level to suit you. This will include an option to keep your whole profile private, or open to only those users you choose to share your information with.

But remember the more information we share the less control we have of it (This light hearted video is a good reminder).

Fact: Facebook’s privacy policy is longer than the United States Constitution (minus amendments) (Bilton, N., 2010. Price of Facebook? Start clicking! New York Times 12 May, p.B8 )

This page has some advice on how to keep social media private – it is aimed at teachers but the instructions are relevant.

The University has some social media guidelines which I would suggest you take a look at.

If you wish you can set your blog so search engines won’t find it easily by going to Dashboard > Settings > Reading  then select “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.”

Adapted from http://23thingswarwick.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/managing-your-online-identity.html under creative commons license and Emily Allbon’s presentation on Upgrade from City