Google | Scholarly Communication @ Temple

“3D Social Networking” by Chris Potter is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

This is the third in a series of posts on academic social networks.

First launched in 2004, Google Scholar was created by former University of California, Santa Barbara Professor Anurag Acharya and engineer Alex Verstak. Although not a social network in the traditional sense, Google Scholar has become an important tool for finding and keeping up with the latest research, promoting one’s own work, and tracking scholarly impact. While Google does not release usage statistics, in a recent Springer Nature survey, 89% of respondents said they use Google Scholar in a professional capacity.

The social part of Google Scholar is pretty basic: you can “follow” researchers so that when they have a new article or citation you will get an email from Google. You can also set up alerts based on your own research interests. This can be useful when you want to know about the latest work being published in your field.

Many researchers use Google Scholar to help establish their scholarly credentials. Creating a Google Scholar Profile can help you raise your visibility as a scholar and make sure you’re getting credit for all of your publications. It’s easy to do, although it does take time to maintain. From the Google Scholar landing page, click on “My Citations.” Then simply fill out your name, affiliation, areas of interest, and provide a link to your personal or departmental website. [Note: You might want to sign up using your personal Gmail account, rather than your Temple.edu account, because if you leave Temple, you will lose access to your Google Scholar account.] Based on this information, Google will then show you a list of publications it thinks were written by you. If you have a common name, you’re likely to get a lot of publications you’ll need to weed through. That having been said, Google often doesn’t find everything, especially in the humanities. So, if some of your publications are missing, know that you can always add them yourself manually.

Going forward, you can choose to have Google automatically update your profile with new publications or you can have them send you an email first to get your approval. We recommend that you approve them first, as Google Scholar data is notoriously messy. However, if you do decide to let Google update them for you, check your profile regularly to make sure that Google hasn’t claimed a number of publications which aren’t yours. Once you’ve setup your profile, you can also add a photograph, verify your Temple affiliation, and add coauthors. Also make sure to set your profile to public!

Based on your publication data, Google will compile your total number of citations, your h-index score, and your i10-index score. These numbers are public and will be displayed unless you set your profile to private. You may not have heard of the i10-index. That’s because only Google Scholar uses it. It’s the number of publications with at least 10 citations. Another thing to note: Any articles you add manually will be included in your total number of citations, but not in your h-index score or your i10-index score.

While it can be tempting to take these metrics at face value it’s important not to. Google Scholar’s citation analysis is done by a computer, not a human. There is very little quality control. Especially if you are coming up for tenure it is more than worth it to take the time to compare your Google Scholar metrics to what you can find in Web of Science and Scopus. We also recommend doing your own research on your scholarly impact.

Do you use Google Scholar? What do you like or dislike about it?

Save

“Google Scanning @ AAEL” by Dave Carter is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The big news in scholarly communication last week came from the Supreme Court, which declined to hear an appeal from the Authors Guild over Google Books. The Supreme Court’s decision puts an end to a legal battle that has been going on since 2005. This is great news for scholars, students, and the public, all of whom have come to rely on Google Books for their research. But the case is also significant because it reaffirms the doctrine of fair use. Fair use is an established part of U.S. copyright law, however, it’s not always clear what does or does not constitute fair use. Generally, courts rely on four factors to determine fair use: the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use upon the potential market for of value of the copyrighted work. The Authors Guild tried to argue that Google’s actions are not protected under fair use, because Google is a for-profit company (as opposed to an educational institution), and because Google is scanning entire books (not just parts of books). However, the courts ultimately ruled that Google has to copy books in their entirely for the project to be useful. In addition, they ruled that Google’s use of the texts is transformative (another key indicator for fair use).

Google’s book scanning project began back in 2004. The company partnered with several major libraries, including Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the University of California, Harvard, Oxford University, Columbia University, Princeton University, and the New York Public Library. The libraries selected books from their collections (focusing primarily on books published before 1923), and then Google did the digitization work for free. Google did not ask permission from any authors before they started scanning the library books. In order to obtain new and recently published books, Google also signed contracts with publishers which allowed them to scan and show parts of in-copyright books. All books (whether from libraries or publishers) are made available through Google’s search engine, which enables users to look for a particular word or phrase across texts. For most books that are still under copyright, however, users can only see a “snippet” of text based on their search term.

In 2005, a group of publishers, along with the Authors Guild and several individual authors, sued Google for copyright infringement. Both publishers and authors worried that they would not be properly compensated for the use of their content. They also worried that hackers would be able to get digital copies of the books and share them widely. In the years that followed, these groups tried to work out a compromise with Google. But in 2011, a federal judge rejected a proposed settlement. Then, in 2013, a district court ruled that Google’s treatment of the books was transformative and that its actions constituted fair use. The Authors Guild then appealed this decision. In 2015, a Second Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Google Books was legal. The appeal to the Supreme Court was the Authors Guild’s last chance.

According to one source, Google has now scanned around 30 million volumes. In addition, they currently have over 40 Library Partners. Although the scans are not always perfect, Google Books remains a rich, free resource for people around the world. It is just another example of why fair use is so important.

Save

Scholarly Communication @ Temple

News on publishing, open access, copyright, and more for researchers and educators

Tag Archives: Google

Google Books and Fair Use