Like most researchers, I look sometimes how my research work performs
versus the work of fellow researchers in the field. Google Scholar offers an easy to use tool for this purpose: it allows you to see the
number of citations of your scientific articles per year and in total, the
number citations per article and your H-index. Metrics like citations and H-index are important indicators of
scientific quality and research impact; they are also widely used, among other
criteria, for promotions and recruiting of academic personnel.
While Google Scholar offers in principle a good
service to academics, I watch with frustration for some time already the rankings in my domain, namely Digital Marketing. The problem: next to well-known
names in this field (like Prof. John Deighton from HBS and Prof Utpal Dholakia
from Rice University) there are five persons on the 1st page of the listing that are totally unknown to me (and to the rest of the researchers on Digital Marketing I suppose). A closer look at the publications of
these high-cited individuals reveals that their publications are coming from
totally unrelated fields like medicine and physics for example. Even a blogger
appears to occupy a high position in the list with publications dating to 1993
when most probably this person was a toddler!
Maybe a coincidence but all names in question seem to be common
Indian names; this brings me to the conclusion that Google Scholar is adding-up all
publications having as (co-)author someone with the same name no matter what the scientific field is, and places these persons in the list without their knowledge or
intention but crediting them with publications that are not even theirs. In the
Digital Marketing category, 4 of the top 5 in the list are such incorrect
cases (at the time this blog was published)!!!
I think that the people who appear in these listings have done nothing
wrong, Google is responsible for this error. Next to the very bad service to the academic
community, the unreliable information in Google Scholar can create also problems in academic appraisals and recruitment.
I am not aware of the scale of the problem in other disciplines, but I think it
is a shame that Google allows something like this to happen. With all the
publicity around the unlimited possibilities of their algorithms, their AI
technologies and the latest about the mastering of Quantum Computing I find it
incredible that something so simple has escaped the attention of their
algorithms or the curators of such results. I tried to inform them by
contacting the Google Scholar help desk but no response after more than a
month. Also, alerting an international newspaper (who found this extraordinary
and promised to act) and a technology magazine did not bring any action on
their part so far.
In my view, it would be easy for Google Scholar to avoid such errors by
putting some of their smart algorithms to work, namely to identify such cases
by simply scanning the content of the articles and decide whether articles about
Nanotechnology
in dentistry, cancer stem cells or Photocatalytic Degradation of Pollutants belong to the
Digital Marketing domain. Also, in the case of common names, an extra control layer could place the various authors to the correct
domains. check this using some of their technology but obviously, they do not do
that, making their results reliable.
As I mentioned, I don’t know the extent of the
problem so if other colleagues are aware of this situation in their domains can
contact me. I also hope that Google maybe will read this post and take action
