Publish or Perish User's Manual

Performing a general search

The general search tab allows you to perform a general Google Scholar query and analyse its results. This tab contains all parameters accepted by Google Scholar. Publish or Perish uses these parameters to perform a Google Scholar query, which is then analyzed and converted to a number of statistics. The results are available on-screen and can also be copied to the Windows clipboard (for pasting in other applications) or saved to a text file (for future reference or further analysis).

For an explanation of the statistics, see the introduction About Publish or Perish.
See Accuracy of the results for circumstances that make the citations analysis less accurate.
See More about citation analysis for an in-depth discussion of the validity, assumptions, and limitations of the underlying sources and methods used by Publish or Perish.

How to perform a general search

To perform a general citation analysis:

Start Publish or Perish;
Enter the relevant parameters in the various fields (see below for an explanation of each parameter);
Click Lookup or press the Enter button.

The program will now contact Google Scholar to obtain the citations, process the list, and calculate the statistics, which are then displayed in the Impact summary field. The full list of results is also available for inspection or modifications.

Refining the search

In many cases the list of results will contain works of authors that are not the intended author. You can refine the citation search and analysis with one or more of the following methods.

If you change the any of the fields (except the selections in the Results list) , you must resubmit the search by clicking Lookup again.

Include an author's initials

You can use a more detailed author's name, for example by including initials. A search for Harzing can be refined by changing it to A Harzing (or Harzing A, which has the same effect); likewise, you can use CT Kulik instead of Kulik if you know that the author usually publishes with those two initials. Be careful, though: authors are not always consistent in the initials that they use, and references to their articles may use other combinations or formats still.

Tip: Name matching is not case-sensitive; harzing, Harzing, and HARZING all match the same works.

Quoting the author's name

By default, Google Scholar matches the name and initials anywhere in the list of authors, so CT Kulik would also be matched by P Kulik, CT Williamson. To match an author's initials only in combination with her or his own surname, use "quotes" around the author's name: "CT Kulik" will not match P Kulik, CT Williamson, but it will match CT Kulik and CTM Kulik, or any other name that contains both CT and Kulik.

Search for multiple authors

To search for articles co-written by specific authors, enter all their names in the Author(s) field: "C Kulik" "M Ambrose" will return only articles that have both authors in their author list.

You can use the logical operators AND and OR in the field: "C Kulik" AND "M Ambrose" returns only co-authored articles (this is also the default behavior if you do not use AND or OR); "C Kulik" OR "M Ambrose" returns articles authored by C Kulik and M Ambrose separately (although possibly with others), or co-authored by both.

Excluding certain authors

To exclude certain author names, enter them in the None of the words field. For example, to exclude CLC Kulik from the earlier example, enter "CLC Kulik" in the None of the words field. You can enter more than one exclusion in None of the words: "CL Kulik" "CLC Kulik" would exclude both these combinations from the search.

Include only works that contain specific words

To restrict the search to works that contain or do not contain specific words, you can enter these words in the following fields:

All of the words - Requires that all of the words must be present in the text, although not necessarily in the given order.
Any of the words - Requires that at least one of the words must be present in the text.
None of the words - Requires that none of the words is present in the text.
The phrase - Requires that all of the words must be present in the text in the order given.

You can check the Title words only box to require that the given words must (or must not) appear in the title of the work. If you leave this box unchecked, the words may appear (or may not appear) anywhere in the work, including the list of author names (as illustrated above).

Restrict the subject areas

If you know the subject area in which the author usually publishes, you can restrict the search to those areas by checking the corresponding boxes. Please be careful, though: Google's subject classification is not always spot-on. For example, the following journals are classified under Social Sciences rather than Business: Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Management, and The International Journal of Cross-cultural Management.

Include or exclude individual works

If the list of results is fairly limited, you can manually include or exclude citations from the analysis by checking or clearing the boxes in the Results list.

Tip: In contrast to the other refinements, changes in the Results list take effect immediately and are reflected in the Impact summary field. You do not have to resubmit your search.

Here are some shortcuts:

The Select all button places check marks in all boxes;
The Unselect all button clears all boxes;
When you use the keyboard to travel up and down in the Results list, pressing the space bar toggles the check mark on and off on the selected line.

Searching for citations of chapters in an edited volume

To find citations of chapters that appear in an edited volume, use the following parameters:

Author(s): leave this field blank.
Publication: enter the title of the edited volume, preferably within quotes.
Year of publication between ... and ...: enter the copyright year of the volume in both fields.
Depending on the number of matches that you find, you may want to use the All of the words or None of the words fields to restrict the search.

Exporting the results

You can export the results as follows:

Click Copy Results to copy the citation analysis to the Windows clipboard. You can then use the Paste command in most applications (including word processors and spreadsheets) to place the data in another document.
Choose File > Save Results... from the main menu to save the citation analysis to a text file. On Windows 95, 98, and Me, this will be a plain text file; on Windows NT4, 2000, XP, and later it will be a UTF-8 encoded text file (which retains non-English characters more easily). Most modern word processors and other applications can deal with these.

In the first two cases, only the currently checked citations will be included; they will appear in the order in which they are shown on the screen. You can change the order by clicking on a column header (Cites, Authors, Title, Year, Publication, Publisher) in the Results list.

Meaning of the search parameters

Parameter	Description
Author(s)	Enter the name or names of the authors to look up. You can use initials as well, and quote the names for better matching.
Publication	Enter the title or titles of the journals or books in which the work appeared.
Title words only	Check this box to apply the next 4 fields to the title of the works only; if unchecked, the next 4 fields are matched in any portion of the works.
All of the words	Enter one or more words that must all appear in the works you are looking for.
Any of the words	Enter one or more words that may appear in the works you are looking for.
None of the words	Enter one or more words that may not appear in the works you are looking for.
The phrase	Enter a phrase that must appear exactly like that in the works you are looking for.
Year of publication between ... and ...	Enter the starting and/or ending years of the works you are looking for, or set either to 0 to indicate "don't care".
Subject areas	Check one or more boxes to restrict the search to only those subject areas. (If you clear all boxes, the search is performed regardless of the subject area.)

Important notes and tips

Important notes and tips
	You can cancel a citation lookup by clicking on the Cancel button or pressing the Esc key. However, it may be a few seconds before the program responds.
	The Impact summary field has a scroll bar on its right that you can use to see the remainder of the analysis results.
	The Results list can be sorted by clicking on a column header (Cites, Authors, Title, Year, Publication, Publisher).
	To see all the citing works for an item, double-click on that item in the Results list.
	Depending on the number of citations found and the speed of your Internet connection, the lookup process may take 2-60 seconds.
	The maximum number of referenced works returned by Google Scholar is a little less than 1000.
	The citation analysis is based on the results returned by Google Scholar. These are not always 100% accurate. See Accuracy of the results for some caveats.