How to Create a Google Account
Creating a Google account is free and only requires a couple of steps. On the upper right of the Google Scholar page, you will see a sign in button. Click on the button and you will see this screen:
Click on the ‘create an account’ link, circled in red in the picture above, and you will be taken to a web page that will allow you to create your Google account. You may choose your user name, create your password, and set other options while on the page.
As a default, when you create a Google Account you are also signed up for a Google+ profile and page as well. You can opt out of having such a page, which may be prudent to avoid possible social media issues with the Florida Bar.
How to Sign Up for the Google Scholar My Citations Feature
Google Scholar allows authors of academic papers to create a profile for the purpose of tracking who cites their works and when the citations occurred. This free tool rivals those available through Scopus and HeinOnline and is easier to use for most authors.
To navigate to Google scholar go to the Google search page (www.google.com) and input ‘Google scholar’ into the search box. The official Google Scholar webpage link should be the first result on the list. Click on the provided link and you will navigate to the Google Scholar starting page.
If you look at the top of the screen, you should see this set of options:
Click on the ‘My Citations’ link and you will be sent to the Google account sign-in webpage. If you already have a Google account you can use your credentials to log in.
*** If you do not have a Google account, or wish to create a separate account specifically to track your citations, please look at the box located to the left of this one to find out how to sign up for a Google account.
Creating a My Citations profile requires that you complete three steps. For the first step you must input your name, affiliation, verification email (your institutional email), and your area(s) of interest on this screen:
After you have filled out the fields, click on the next step button located in the bottom left of the dialog box.
The second step is to add the articles that you have written to your My Citations profile. Google will assist you in finding your articles by providing a list of articles that it determines might be yours based on the information that you supplied in step one. After adding the articles that you would like to have tracked, you can move on to the final step.
Step three will allow you to choose you how you would like your citation information to be updated by using the options on this screen:
Once you choose how you would like your citation information to be updated, you will be directed to your profile page.
Your profile page will allow you to see who has been citing your works, when the citations were created, and what citation index you would like to view.
The profile page will also provide a graph that will show citation numbers in a graph for. (Since this is a mock profile, the graph is unavailable. It would appear in the “Citations to my articles” section of the profile page.
You can edit your profile, your settings, and whether you wish to make your profile public or not by using the options located at the top of the page.
You now have a My Citations profile that will keep track of any citations to your articles without you having to manually look for current citations on your own.
Thank you for using this guide. If you have any questions, please contact one of your reference librarians and we assist you as best we can.
