Research Paper on Manipulating Google Scholar Citations and Google Scholar Metrics

[bhartzer]

Just recently, an interesting university paperhas surfaced that shows how some university students manipulated Google Scholar Citations and Google Scholar metrics. And they claim that it was "easy, simple, and tempting".

The paper is by Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, Nicolás Robinson-García, and Daniel Torres-Salinas, from Universidad de Granada and Universidad de Navarra.

Certainly is an interesting read...

In order to alert the research community over how easily one can manipulate the data and bibliometric indicators offered by Google’s products we present an experiment in which we manipulate the Google Citations’ profiles of a research group through the creation of false documents that cite their documents, and consequently, the journals in which they have published modifying their H-index. For this purpose we created six documents authored by a faked author and we uploaded them to a researcher’s personal website under the University of Granada’s domain.

Here's a link to the paper, it's a PDF:
[arxiv.org...]

[tedster]

It is not necessary to use any type of software for creating faked documents: you only need to copy and paste the same text over and over again and upload the resulting documents in a webpage under an institutional domain.

Wow - that sure can't stand for very long. Thanks for the link, bhartzer.

[ergophobe]

As a recovering scholar... this is an awesome find! My mind reels at the possibilities and at the satires that could be written here. I think the main character in my next novel (not that there has been a previous novel mind you) will be a professor who got tenure based on manipulating Google scholar rankings...

Thanks bhartzer.

[lucy24]

Is the paper available through G### Scholar?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

This is nothing new, many web spammers outrank sources right now and so I don't see how anyone could expect Google to be 100% right, even with scholar. When we trust in a machine to tell us what's best, instead of our own judgment, the result is always going to be less than perfect, imo.