Google Scholar: Wrong master record
Publish or Perish tutorial
No less than 19 versions of the same record
Many publications have multiple occurrences on the Web. For instance my 2009 article with Nancy Adler occurs no less than 19 times.
In nearly all cases, Google Scholar correctly identifies the most appropriate record – usually on the official publisher’s website – as the “master record” to which all citations are ascribed. In the first example, this is the website of the Academy of Management’s journal Academy of Management Learning & Education.
Sometimes Google Scholar gets it wrong, very wrong
However, in an estimated 2-3% of the publications, Google Scholar – for unknown reasons – “picks” the wrong record as master record, even if a more appropriate one is available. The article below occurs 15 times, but Google Scholar somehow picked the “worst” master record, a pdf on http.tarma.com that when clicking on it provides a “404 file not found”.
A full-text pre-publication version of this article is available from no less than seven sources; even the published version is available from four different sources, including the publisher’s website (see below):
As a result of the wrongly attributed master record this publication appears in Google Scholar (and Publish or Perish) not only with the wrong title (the title was changed in the final revision), but also with the wrong publication year. Fortunately, these problems are rare, especially with journal articles published by mainstream publishers.
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Copyright © 2022 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Thu 2 Jun 2022 11:06
Anne-Wil Harzing is Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London and visiting professor of International Management at Tilburg University. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.
