Steps to use Google Scholar Citation
Explorer
Google Scholar Citation Explorer is a script by “Mayank L” that allows a user to identify the
number of forward-citations two or more references found in google scholar™ share. It
does this by using a client-side ECMAScript (aka Javascript) to allow a user to specify which
citations to explore, then to identify which citations are in common between those the user
selected.
The original version also supported an HTML pop-up window that depicted the shared and
non-shared citations between the selectees. The modified version supports printing the
selected citations, their forward-citations, and the sparse citation x citation links in a CSV
popup window. The user can the copy the contents of this popup window to a MS Word
document and save it as a UTF-8 text document (this save as option prevents character
mangling for non-ASCII character sets). Once in a UTF-8 csv file, the user can import the
data for citation analysis in any tool of their choose.
Install Tampermonkey for Chrome
Tampermonkey is a javascript framework that allows users to install and use customized
client-side javascript on webpages they visit/download. This capability allows users to do
client-side processing that the web page author(s) never intended, and greatly increases
the flexibility of processing by users without have to wait for the web page author(s) to
implement desired functionality
1. In Chrome, navigate to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/home
2. Use the Google Store’s search function to search for “Tampermonkey” and install it on
your Chrome web browser. You may have to restart Chrome for it to take effect.
Install Google Scholar Citation Explorer
1. Navigate to http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/44965
2. Click on the ”Install” button to install Citation Explorer
Install Mike Lanham’s modifications to Google Scholar Citation
Explorer
1. Click on the Tampermoney icon in the upper right corner of the chrome browser (see
also the figure below).
2. Click on the script name to open its editor and settings window. Paste the Lanhammodified version of Citation Explorer into the editor window and press the save icon.
3. These modifications allow the script to accept Google Scholar output circa October
2012, retain the original functionality, and adds the CSV output functionality.
Use Google Scholar Citation Explorer
1. Navigate to scholar.google.com and being a search
2. The script adds check boxes labeled, in red text, “Explore Citations” just to the left of
Google’s “Cited by …” hyperlink. Place a check mark in several boxes to see what
citations they have in common.
Scholar’s info bar
3. These modifications allow the script to accept Google Scholar output circa October
2012, retain the original functionality, and adds the CSV output functionality. If you
can’t remember which documents you’ve selected (including across multiple searches),
then click on the “6 documents” hyperlink and refresh your memory—and delete
entries if you like. To hide this list, select the “2 documents” hyperlink.
Click to remove
show/hide list
4. After selecting 2 or more citations, click on the “Citation explorer” hyperlink.
5. A new HTML layer is created by the script to display the selected documents. You can
scroll down if needed (I’ve got a problem showing the scroll bars for now).
HTML View of results
Below is an example of the output in a new HTML tab in the chrome browser. The top of the
unnamed tab shows the selected documents and numbers them starting at 1. The bottom of
the window shows the citations
for the selected documents. On the
left side of the bottom, it shows a
large X in the columns that
represent the selected documents
(e.g., an X in column 1 indicates
that document 1 uses that citation;
an X in column 1 and column 2
indicates both document 1 and 2
use that citation).
CSV View of results
The comma separated variable
format option, depicts the same
information in a different format
for different purposes.
Selecting this option also creates a
new unnamed tab in the chrome
browser. There is a header row
followed by the meta data for each of the selected citations. After each selected citation, the
script displays all the documents that cite the selected citations (the forward citation list).
Below the citation list, is a sparse formatted set of links between citations.
These are two distinctly different sets of information. The top portion supports the
importation into a network analytics
application to conduct citation analysis
(e.g. author x author, author x journal,
journal x article) . The bottom portion
supports creating the article x article
network.
Its important to note that the character
set returned by Google is frequently not
ASCII. Copying this information into an
application incapable of supporting
UTF-8 will likely cause information loss
as your system attempts to use
characters not in your default character
set.
Copying Citation Explorer data to MS Word
1. Copy the text from the CSV screen and Paste into an empty MS Word document (or
other UTF-8 capable application).
2. Use MS Word’s “Save As” the top portion of the CSV output as your citations.txt file in
the UTF-8 character set (unless you have no need for the extended character set).
3. Save the bottom portion (the article x article links) to a separate CSV file (e.g.
citationLinks.txt).
Using ORA to Start Citation Analysis
1. Open ORA (makes assumption that you already have ORA installed)
2. Create Meta-Network
3. Create the following node sets
1.1. Author (as Agent)
1.2. Article (as Resource)
1.3. Journal (as Organization)
1.4. Year (as Event)
4. Create the following networks to link the node sets
1.1. Article x Article
1.2. Article x Year
1.3. Author x Article
1.4. Author x Journal
1.5. Journal x Article
5. Select the article x article network and let’s import data into this network.
1.1. In ORA, select from the menu FileImport
1.2. Select the “Import Excel or text delimited files” option
1.3. Select the “Table of network links”
1.3.1. Browse and select "citationlinks.txt" file you created above
1.3.2. Select CiteBy and Cited, set both types as Resource, and change the ID from
Resource to Article
1.3.3. Define the network by clicking "new"
1.3.4. Select CitedBy in the "Source IDs" columns
1.3.5. Select Cited in the "Target IDs" columns
1.3.6. Ensure the “Create new nodes for unrecognized Node IDs” box is selected.
1.3.7. Select Finish and ORA should create an article x article network as well as
populate the article node set with article-IDs.
After importing, you can
choose to visualize the import
and visually identify the
shared citations between the
selected citations.
2. Now let’s import other
networks, and have ORA
auto-populate the
appropriate nodesets as it
imports the data. Select the
Author x Article network.
2.1. In ORA, select from the
menu FileImport
2.2. Select the “Import
Excel or text delimited files” option
2.3. Select the “Table of network links”
2.3.1. Browse and select "citations.txt " file you created above
2.3.2. Select CitationId and author0, author1, author2, through author4 as the
columns that contain node IDs.
2.3.3. We will now import all five authors in the same import effort by creating five
networks in the Step 3 portion of the import dialog window. Define the five
networks by selection the author as the source, the citationID as the target, and
link as the link weight. Set the network ID as Author x Article as shown below.
2.3.4. Create five (5) new networks for Author x Article data import as shown
above. When done, if you anticipate needing this import configuration again,
save it for reuse.
2.3.5. Click Finish when done.
2.4. Now do the same type of import for the remainder of your networks—all drawn
from the citations.txt input file. The remaining networks include article x year,
author x journal, and journal x article.
3. Finally, lets import the remaining attributes for the article itself (e.g. title, URL for the
citation, URL for the cited by link, the related articles link, the “all versions” (aka
cluster) links, the cited-by count,
3.1. Select the Article Node Set and select the editor tab. Then click on the Import
button on the right side of the window in the “Attributes” box.
3.2. Select CitedBy in the "Source IDs" columns
3.2.1. Select Cited in the "Target IDs" columns
3.2.2. Ensure the “Create new nodes for unrecognized Node IDs” box is selected.
3.2.3. Change the Year field to Text, as the script to extract the information from the
HTML is fairly fragile, and prone to have non-numeric values in the field.
3.2.4. Select Finish and ORA should create an article x article network as well as
populate the article node set with article-IDs.