Category Archives: Google Scholar Blog

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AI outlines in Scholar PDF Reader: skim per-section bullets, deep read what you need


Do you have an ever-growing pile of papers that you absolutely must read? Extended outlines to the rescue! Today, we are adding AI outlines to Scholar PDF Reader to help you read papers both quickly and in depth.
An AI outline is an extended table of contents for the paper. It includes a few bullets for each key section. Skim the outline for a quick overview. Click on a bullet to deep read where it gets interesting - be it methods, results, discussion, or specific details.
AI outlines are, as yet, available for selected papers in English. They are enabled when you click a PDF link in Google Scholar. For other PDFs, the regular section outline is displayed and you can click on the AI Outline icon to request one.
If you already have Scholar PDF Reader, it will be updated, sometime over the next week or so, to include AI outlines. You can also update the Reader yourself by going to the Chrome Extensions page (enter chrome://extensions in the address bar), enabling “Developer mode” on the top right of the page and clicking the “Update” button on the top left.
If you don’t yet have the Reader, you can install it from its Chrome web store page. In addition to AI outlines, Scholar PDF Reader has much else to help you read faster – one-click preview of cited articles, linked figure and table mentions, citing and related articles and light/dark modes.
Here is hoping Scholar PDF Reader helps researchers everywhere read all that is on their pending paper piles quickly and thoroughly.
Posted by: Namit Shetty, Akash Sethi, Samuel Yuan, Jonny Chang, Hanshen Wang, Alex Verstak

2024 Scholar Metrics Released


Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Today, we are releasing the 2024 version of Scholar Metrics. This release covers articles published in 2019–2023 and includes citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar as of July 2024

Scholar Metrics include journals from websites that follow our inclusion guidelines and selected conferences in Engineering & Computer Science. Publications with fewer than 100 articles in 2019-2023, or publications that received no citations over these years are not included.

You can browse publications in categories such as Ocean & Marine Engineering, Drama & Theater Arts or Forests & Forestry. You will see the top 20 publications ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. You also can browse the top 100 publications in several languages - for example, Portuguese and Spanish. For each publication, you can view the top papers by clicking on the h5-index.

Scholar Metrics include a large number of publications beyond those listed on the per-category and per-language pages. You can find these by typing words from the title in the search box, e.g., [sustainability], [logistics], [salud publica].

For more details, see the Scholar Metrics help page.

Posted by: Anurag Acharya

Supercharge your PDF reading: Follow references, skim outline, jump to figures


Researchers have long loved PDFs for reading papers. You can focus on absorbing the scholarship – the format is simple and clean. Researchers have also long complained about PDFs – we have heard “it takes ages to follow a reference”, “I really need to see the methods section first”, and the like.
Today, we are launching the Google Scholar PDF Reader to enhance your paper reading. It brings the familiar ease and seamlessness of Scholar to reading PDF papers. In-text citations are now links – with one click, you will see a preview of the cited article and often a version you can read. All of this without losing your place in the paper.
Scholar PDF Reader displays an automatically computed table of contents. Want to go first to the methods section? Click on its link in the outline. Want to drill down to a specific subsection? Expand sections to quickly find your way there.
In-text figure and table mentions are now links too. Click on a link to jump to the figure. Once you are done taking in the details, use the familiar back button in the browser to return to where you were.
And there is more!
  • Copy and paste citations as you read
  • Save citations to a reference manager to cite later
  • Look up citing and related articles for the paper you are reading
  • Pick a display theme that’s right for your eyes – light, dark, or night
Scholar PDF Reader is available as a Chrome browser extension. Install it from the Chrome web store page and take it for a spin.
Happy reading!
Posted by: Sam Yuan, Danni Chen, Ishana Narayanan, Janelle Wen, Hanshen Wang, Alex Verstak

2023 Scholar Metrics Released


Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Today, we are releasing the 2023 version of Scholar Metrics. This release covers articles published in 2018–2022 and includes citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar as of July 2023.

Scholar Metrics include journals from websites that follow our inclusion guidelines and selected conferences in Engineering & Computer Science. Publications with fewer than 100 articles in 2018-2022, or publications that received no citations over these years are not included.

You can browse publications in specific categories such as Medical Informatics, Film or Geophysics as well as broad areas like Business, Economics & Management or Chemical & Material Sciences. You will see the top 20 publications ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. You also can browse the top 100 publications in several languages - for example, Portuguese and Spanish. For each publication, you can view the top papers by clicking on the h5-index.

Scholar Metrics include a large number of publications beyond those listed on the per-category and per-language pages. You can find these by typing words from the title in the search box, e.g., [noise], [climate], [enfermeria].

For more details, see the Scholar Metrics help page.

Posted by: Anurag Acharya

Public Access Reports For Your Funding Agencies


Scholar profiles include a Public Access section to help you track and manage public access mandates for all your articles. Starting today, we’re making it easy to review and export public access reports for each of your funding agencies. You can view the public access status of articles funded by individual agencies, make changes, and export a public access summary for inclusion in your project reports or other uses.
On the Public Access page in your profile, you’ll see a list of agencies that funded your articles (this is available only for public profiles). You can review the public access report for an agency by clicking its name. On the report, there is an "Export" button to save a copy.
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, you’ll see a link to it 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, we’ll also include a link to submit your article to that repository. We’ll crawl and index the links you give us, and will automatically update your public access reports.
If you see errors on your public access reports, you can correct them. For example, you can remove articles, correct publication dates, or update funding information. For more details, see the public access help page.
Public access mandates help researchers everywhere build on what their colleagues have discovered. We hope this helps all researchers work at the frontier of knowledge.
Posted by: Akash Sethi, Janelle Wen, Philippe David, Yuki

2022 Scholar Metrics Released


Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Today, we are releasing the 2022 version of Scholar Metrics. This release covers articles published in 2017–2021 and includes citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar as of June 2022.

Scholar Metrics include journals from websites that follow our inclusion guidelines and selected conferences in Engineering & Computer Science. Publications with fewer than 100 articles in 2017-2021, or publications that received no citations over these years are not included.

You can browse publications in specific categories such as Food Science & Technology, Sustainable Energy, or Public Health as well as broad areas like Business, Economics & Management or Chemical & Material Sciences. You will see the top 20 publications ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. You also can browse the top 100 publications in several languages - for example, Portuguese and Spanish. For each publication, you can view the top papers by clicking on the h5-index.

Scholar Metrics include a large number of publications beyond those listed on the per-category and per-language pages. You can find these by typing words from the title in the search box, e.g., [heart], [water], [saude].

For more details, see the Scholar Metrics help page.

Posted by: Anurag Acharya

Save papers to read later

Found an interesting paper and don’t have time to read it right now? Today we are adding a reading list to your Scholar Library to help you save papers and read them later.

You can also use it to save papers you find off-campus but want to read on-campus where you have access to the full text, or papers you find on your smartphone but want to read on a larger screen.

To add a paper to your reading list, click “Save” and add the “Reading list” label. To use this feature, you need to be signed in to your Google account.

Save screenshot

Label screenshot

To get to your reading list, click “My library”:

My library screenshot

…and select “Reading list” in the sidebar.

Reading list screenshot

To read the paper, click the [PDF] or [HTML] link next to its title.

Result screenshot

After reading a paper, click "Archive" or "Delete" to remove it from your reading list. Archived papers are kept in your library for later reference; deleted papers are removed from your library.

Archive and delete screenshot

Now you can gather papers as you go, block off a good chunk of time, and dig into the details.

Posted by: Danni Chen, Kyu Jin Hwang, and Alex Verstak

2021 Scholar Metrics Released


Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Today, we are releasing the 2021 version of Scholar Metrics. This release covers articles published in 2016–2020 and includes citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar as of July 2020.

Scholar Metrics include journals from websites that follow our inclusion guidelines and selected conferences in Engineering & Computer Science. Publications with fewer than 100 articles in 2016-2020, or publications that received no citations over these years are not included.

You can browse publications in specific categories such as Computational Linguistics, Hematology, or Religion as well as broad areas like Engineering & Computer Science or Humanities, Literature & Arts . You will see the top 20 publications ordered by their five-year h-index and h-median metrics. You also can browse the top 100 publications in several languages - for example, Portuguese and Spanish. For each publication, you can view the top papers by clicking on the h5-index.

Scholar Metrics include a large number of publications beyond those listed on the per-category and per-language pages. You can find these by typing words from the title in the search box, e.g., [informatics], [special education], [salud].

For more details, see the Scholar Metrics help page.

Posted by: Anurag Acharya

Track and manage your public access mandates


Today, we are adding a Public access section to Scholar profiles to help you track and manage public access mandates for your articles. If your public Scholar profile has papers covered by public access mandates from research funding agencies, you should see a new section that looks like this:
Click "VIEW ALL" to see the full list of mandated articles, and then click the title of the article to see its mandates.
Articles can be publicly available from several sources including the 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 profile, you can update the list of mandated articles and make corrections. You can also upload a public PDF to your own Google Drive; this makes the article publicly available from your profile and eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar.

Many funding agencies have added public access mandates to promote broad access to funded research. This helps researchers everywhere build on what their colleagues have discovered. You can browse a list of public access mandates from funding agencies worldwide and view summary statistics for each agency that include the level of public availability of mandated articles overall and over several recent years.

For more details, see the public access help page.

Posted by: Akash Sethi, Kyu Jin Hwang, Alex Verstak, Anurag Acharya

Scholar Recommendations Reloaded!


Your Scholar Recommendations just got better - fresher, more relevant, and easier to scan. If you have a Scholar profile and are actively publishing, your Scholar homepage should have recommended articles that look like this:
The list is organized by date with the latest articles on the top. You can skim over article titles, expand the summaries, and read the full article if available. You can also save articles in your Scholar Library to read them later. To do a more thorough scan, click on the “More articles” links.
On your phone, you can also swipe through the abstracts - and save the ones that caught your eye for comfortable reading on a larger screen:
The best part is under the hood. We have greatly expanded both the relevance and the coverage of the recommendations, so most researchers should find something new and interesting if they check weekly. You can, of course, check as often as you wish, or have the recommendations delivered to your email (click the blue "Follow" button in your profile to subscribe).

To bring you these recommendations, we analyze the articles in your Scholar profile. We determine relevance using statistical models that incorporate the topics of your articles, the places where you publish, the authors you work with and cite, the authors that work in the same area as you and the citation graph.

To get your recommendations, all you need to do is create your Scholar profile with the papers you have written. Recommended articles will automatically start to appear within a few days.

Posted by: Namit Shetty, Alex Verstak, Kyu Jin Hwang, Linghua Jin, Philippe David, Anurag Acharya