Abstract
Following Hartley (Scientometrics 118:375–381, 2019) I attempted to draw lessons from my personal Google citations (> 100,000) by reviewing over 100,000 personal citations. The review asked eight questions: Do papers in high impact journals necessarily lead to higher personal citations? Does innovative research attract more citations than replications and refinement? Do reviews and meta-analysis attract more citations than empirical studies? Which gets cited more: books, chapters, presentations, chapters? What determines the pattern of individual paper citations over time? Do citations vary across academic disciplines? Is it better to focus on a few specific journals or “spread-the-word” to maximize citations? How important is it to devise one’s own tests (statistical/diagnostic) to maximize citations? All these questions were answered by inspecting this N = 1 data set. It provides hypotheses for other researchers to explore and test. Limitations are acknowledged.
References
Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Park, J. (2014). An incomplete list of eminent psychologists of the modern era. Archives of Scientific Psychology,2, 20–32.
Hartley, J. (2017). Authors and their citations: A point of view. Scientometrics,110(2), 1081–1084.
Hartley, J. (2019). Some reflections on being cited 10,000 times. Scientometrics,118, 375–381.
Rushton, J. P. (2001). A scientometric appreciation of H. J. Eysenck’s contributions to psychology. Personality and Individual Differences,31, 17–39.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Furnham, A. What I have learned from my Google Scholar and H index. Scientometrics 122, 1249–1254 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03316-4
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03316-4