Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an essential research tool which is used by most people.

On this page I mention a few aspects which some people may not be aware of.


Creating and updating your own profile

After creating a Google account (if you don't already have one -- remember you don't have to use Gmail if you don't want to) follow these detailed instructions to create your Google Scholar Profile.

The advantage of having a profile is that you can manage it, declare which papers belong to you, and which don't, check on your citations and who is citing your work, and get helpful suggestions from Google Scholar of articles you might like to read.

Generally, the only management my profile requires is to deal with duplicates, either to merge two records (an arXiv pre-print and the final published article) or to declare which of several versions is the definitive final version (although Google Scholar usually does this successfully on its own).


Adding Oxford University library access

While logged into your Google account, go to Google Scholar and click on Settings at the top.

On the left hand side, click on Library Links, and specify University of Oxford as a library source. This will give you access (via your Oxford single-sign-on if you are outside the Oxford network) to papers for which Oxford has an electronic subscription. It will show up as "Find it @ Oxford" on the right-hand-side of articles you are searching for.


Creating your own Google Scholar library

While logged into your Google account, go to Google Scholar and click on My Library at the top.

Initially this makes a library consisting of the articles in your Google profile. However, you can also create collections with "labels", and add any papers you find in Google Scholar to these groups by clicking on the "Save" link under the article, with a second click on it allowing you to edit the labels associated with the article. Thus, you can build up labelled collections of papers on various topics of interest, gathered together so that later you can access them, and download the original papers.

Since these are stored as part of your Google Scholar profile, they will be accessible on any and all devices you use.


Ensuring Google "crawls" over your webpages

This is not a Google Scholar setting, but by going to this link you can register your homepage so that Google will regularly check to find new preprints and conference talks.



Mike Giles, 2/9/2015