The Ulutas Medical Journal p-ISSN 2149-0430 e-ISSN 2149-388X

Setting up a Google Scholar profile

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A Google Scholar profile lists your publications in one place, shows who cites them and calculates citation metrics automatically. Google describes it as quick to set up and free. Because Google Scholar collects articles automatically, a profile also needs some care: it can pick up papers by other people with similar names, or split one article into several records. This guide explains how to create the profile, add and merge articles, keep it accurate and connect it with your ORCID record.

Creating the profile

Google Scholar's help pages describe these steps:

  1. Sign in to a Google account. Google recommends a personal account rather than an institutional one, so that you keep the profile if you move.

  2. Open the profile sign-up form, confirm the spelling of your name, and enter your affiliation and research interests.

  3. Add your institutional e-mail address and verify it by clicking the link sent to that inbox.

  4. Choose your articles. Google Scholar shows groups of articles by authors with names similar to yours; add all of yours. Your papers may be spread over several groups.

  5. Choose how updates are handled: apply them automatically, or review them before they change your profile.

  6. Finish and make the profile public once you are satisfied. A profile is private until you choose to make it public.

To be eligible to appear in Google Scholar search results, a profile must be public and have a verified e-mail address at a university or institution; addresses such as gmail.com do not count. If you publish under several forms of your name, for example with and without Turkish letters, Google notes that you may need several searches to find all your articles.

Adding and merging articles

  • Missing articles: choose "Add articles" and search by title, keywords or your name. If the search does not find the article, use "Add article manually" and enter the details. Google notes that citations to manually added articles may take a few days to appear.

  • Groups of articles: "Add article groups" lets you add several related records at once.

  • Duplicates: if the same article appears twice (for example the preprint and the published version), select both and click "Merge", then choose the best citation. Your metrics will count the merged versions as one article.

  • Wrong details: click the article title, then "Edit" to correct it. After substantial edits, Google suggests checking the "Scholar articles" list on that page and unmerging records that no longer match, because they affect your citation counts.

When merging, the citation count may be lower than the sum of the two versions; Google explains that a paper citing both versions is counted only once.

Keeping it clean

Google is open about the limits of automatic matching: it has no way of knowing which articles are really yours, and author names are often abbreviated or shared. It recommends checking the articles in your profile and removing those written by others.

  • Check your profile regularly, especially if you chose automatic updates.

  • Delete articles that are not yours; deleted items go to the trash and can be restored if you make a mistake.

  • Look out for a ∗ next to a "Cited by" count; Google uses it to flag counts that may include citations that do not match the article.

  • Add a link to your institutional or personal homepage with "Edit" next to your name.

Google Scholar also suggests that you can deposit your papers in your institution's repository or on your personal website, following your publisher's rules, so that it can find the full text. This journal's Self-Archiving Policy allows any version of articles published here to be deposited without embargo, with a link to the DOI.

Linking to ORCID

Google Scholar profiles and ORCID records are separate services, and Google Scholar's help pages do not describe an automatic connection between them. You can still keep them consistent:

  • From Google Scholar to ORCID: select articles in your profile and click "Export" to download a BibTeX file. In ORCID, go to Works, choose "Add" and then "Add BibTeX", and select the file. ORCID says this import is tested with BibTeX from Google Scholar, but recommends its other import tools where possible, because BibTeX carries less metadata, may not import special characters correctly, and works without a DOI may not group correctly. Check Turkish names and titles after importing.

  • For new articles: give your ORCID iD when you submit. Publishers that send ORCID iDs to Crossref allow your ORCID record to be updated automatically after you grant permission (see our guide on getting an ORCID iD).

  • Cross-link: put your ORCID address in your Google Scholar homepage field or on the homepage it links to, and list the same affiliation in both.

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