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Kraemer Family Library

Creating Author Profiles: Google Scholar

This guide covers how to create and update online author profiles to represent your scholarly activity.

Why Google Scholar?

Having a Google Scholar profile helps researchers searching in Google Scholar discover all of your works in one place. Because Google Scholar is so commonly used this also helps create a record of your research that is likely to be found by anyone searching for you or your work, including potential co-authors, grant and award committee members, and interested researchers.

A Google Scholar profile:

  • Creates an easily discoverable profile of your research
  • Can help you track citations of your work

How to create and update your Google Scholar profile - text

1. If you do not have a Gmail account, you will need to create one in order to have a Google Scholar profile.

2. Go to scholar.google.com [opens in new tab]

3. Log into your Gmail account

4. Click on the My Profile icon in the upper left.

Screenshot of the Google Scholar homepage with an orange arrow pointing to the My Profile button in the upper left.

5. Fill out the intake info.

  • Full name – use the name you publish under. This can be changed later.
  • Affiliation –  include your job title, department, and university
  • Email for verification – use your UCCS email. This helps Google Scholar verify that you are affiliated where you say you are.
  • Areas of interest – list keywords that someone might use to find your research
  • Homepage – link either your webpage from UCCS, or a personal professional website if you have one. If you don’t have either of these, don’t worry, that’s fine.

6. Find your work

  • Google Scholar lets you add works to your profile by groups (sets of articles they identify as being from the same author) or by individual articles. Adding by groups can allow you to add works faster, but you may accidentally add some works that aren’t yours. (Don’t worry you can remove those later.)

A screenshot of a Google Scholar profile for Charles Dickens. The screenshot shows the works that Google Scholar automatically found for Charles Dickens by groups. One option has 9 items in it, another has 2. There are checkboxes next to the items if Charles Dickens decides he wants to add one of these groups to his profile.

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  • Adding by Articles means you can review every individual work of yours that Google Scholar finds. Depending on how many publications you have this can be arduous, but it also allows you to make sure every work added is really yours.

Screenshot of Google Scholar showing a list of articles that Charles Dickens could choose to add to his profile. Instead of groups, every individual work is listed with checkboxes beside them should Dickens choose to add them to his profile.

  • If Google Scholar is unable to find certain works of yours, don’t worry. You can add works manually once your basic profile is set up.

7. Choose your profiles settings

  • Article Updates – When Google Scholar finds a work that they think is yours, do you want it added automatically to your profile? Or would you like them to email you and give you a chance to approve the item?
  • Profile Visibility – Do you want your profile to be findable in Google and Google Scholar. As the goal behind setting up these profiles is usually visibility, the answer is likely yes.
  • Follow by Email – This allows you to customize what Google contacts you about. You can choose to learn about new articles that Google Scholar’s algorithm thinks you’ll be interested in based on your work. Or you can choose to be notified of any citations of your work. Or both, or neither.

Screenshot of the article updates options in Google Scholar.

8. Edit what works appear on your profile.

  • Go through the works you’ve added. If any aren’t yours, select them and delete them from your profile.

 

Screenshot of the works on Charles Dickens's Google Scholar profile. One of the works, Life of Charles James Mathews, isn't by him, so he's selected that item. An orange arrow points to the trashcan icon delete button that Dickens will want to click to remove this item from his profile.

9. Edit any works that aren’t appearing correctly.

  • Sometimes the metadata on an item is incorrect. You can fix this.
  • Click on the item with the error. In this example, the publisher got Charles Dickens’s name backwards. He’s showing up as D. Charles and his name is listed as Dickens Charles.

A screenshot of an incorrect work on Charles Dickens's profile. His name is listed as D. Charles not C. Dickens. An orange arrow points to the hyperlinked title he'll want to click to edit this.

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  • Click on Edit. Then make the necessary changes, whether that’s fixing the title, indicating the correct item type, changing names, publication dates, etc.

A screenshot of an item record in Charles Dickens's Google Scholar profile. An orange box highlights where his name is listed incorrectly as Dickens Charles and an orange arrow points up to the edit button.

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  • Google Scholar gives you 3 option for how to handle this edit.
    • “Keep this article as it is now” allows you to edit how this item appears in your profile, but the item itself stays linked to the same place on the web. Also, note that an edit doesn’t fix errors on the item itself or the metadata within Google Scholar. If for instance an article has the wrong name for you, you can change how it appears in this profile, but would need to contact the publisher to get the name changed on the article. Learn more about name changes and your scholarly record here.
    • “Remove this article” simply removes the item from your profile entirely
    • “Unmerge this article” creates a new record with the edited information, but the original record still appears on your profile as well.

Screenshot of the edit record options that appear at the bottom of an edited record.

10. Add items that Google Scholar didn’t find by either searching for them specifically, or adding them manually.

  • Using the add button (which looks like a plus sign in a box), add items by article groups, add articles, or add article manually.
  • Add article groups is similar to when you were setting the profile up. Google Scholar automatically generates groups of articles they think are by the same author. This way you can add many items at once, but you may add something that wasn’t yours and will need to delete it.
  • Add articles lets you review individual items Google Scholar has matched with your name, or use the search box to search for a specific item name if you’re not seeing it.
  • If Google Scholar can’t find your work, you can also add it manually, selecting an item type and filling out the required fields.

A screenshot of Charles Dickens's Google Scholar profile. The add button (which looks like a plus sign and is located right next to the title column header) has been clicked revealing a drop down menu of options including add article groups, add articles, add article manually.

11. Occasionally check your profile and add any items you need to keep it up to date.