Getting the Most Out of Google Scholar: Managing Your Academic Profile

Google Scholar is one of the most powerful research tools for academics. In this blog, we’ll show you how to use Google Scholar to manage your research profile, track citations, and improve your visibility as an academic. We’ll also explain how it fits into your broader research workflow alongside tools like ResearchDock.

Why Researchers Should Use Google Scholar Profiles

Creating a Google Scholar profile gives you a professional and searchable presence online. Here are a few reasons to create one:

Display your full list of academic publications
Automatically track your citations, h-index, and i10-index
Appear in top results when someone searches your name in Google
Make it easy for other researchers, collaborators, or students to find and cite your work

For postgraduate researchers and early-career academics, a well-maintained profile can help boost research visibility and build academic reputation.

How to Set Up Your Google Scholar Profile

If you're wondering how to create a Google Scholar profile, here are the steps:

Sign in to Google Scholar
Visit scholar.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
Create your academic profile
Click “My Profile” in the top left. Enter your name, institutional affiliation, university email, research interests, and a personal homepage if you have one.
Add your publications
Google Scholar will suggest articles it thinks belong to you. Review and add the correct ones. You can also manually search for missing research papers by title or DOI.
Choose how updates are handled
Decide whether Google Scholar should automatically add new publications or ask you to confirm each one. It’s safer to approve manually to avoid incorrect entries.

This setup only takes 10 to 15 minutes and immediately boosts your online research presence.

Maintaining a Clean and Accurate Research Profile

Once your profile is live, it’s important to keep it accurate. An out-of-date or messy profile can confuse readers and misrepresent your impact. Here are a few best practices:

Merge duplicate entries when the same paper appears twice (e.g. preprint and published version)
Delete unrelated papers that have been mistakenly added to your profile
Edit publication details if titles, journal names, or years are wrong
Group versions of a paper to consolidate citations under one listing

Maintaining your academic profile once every few months is usually enough. You can also update it each time you publish a new article.

Set Up Google Scholar Alerts

Google Scholar Alerts are a helpful feature that lets you stay updated on your field. You can get email notifications when:

Your work is cited
A new paper is published on a specific topic
A certain keyword or author appears in the literature

To set this up, go to Google Scholar Alerts, enter your search terms, and choose how often you want updates.

This is one of the easiest ways to stay informed without checking manually every day.

Using Google Scholar Alongside ResearchDock

Google Scholar is your public-facing academic profile. ResearchDock is your internal workspace for managing projects, manuscripts, notes, and collaboration. Used together, they help you stay organised and visible.

Here’s how you can integrate both tools:

Add your Google Scholar link to your ResearchDock profile: Display Photo (top right) -> Profile -> Links
Cross-reference publications in ResearchDock with those listed on your Google Scholar page

We’re currently working on deeper integrations with citation tools and profiles so you can track impact from within your ResearchDock dashboard.

Final Thoughts

Google Scholar is one of the most important free research tools for academics. Keeping your profile updated improves your research visibility, helps others cite your work, and gives you a quick way to show your academic impact. It is especially useful for researchers who want to track citations and build a searchable online presence.

If you are using ResearchDock to manage your research projects, tasks, and collaborations, take a few minutes to add your Scholar profile to your team or personal page. It’s a simple action that helps your work get noticed.