Purpose

The study's main purpose is to scrutinize Google Scholar profiles and find the answer to the question, “Do authors play fair or manipulate Google Scholar Bibliometric Indicators like h-index and i10-index?”

Design/methodology/approach

The authors scrutinized the Google Scholar profiles of the top 50 library and science researchers claiming authorship of 21,022 publications. The bibliographic information of all the 21,022 publications like authorship and subject details were verified to identify accuracy, discrepancies and manipulation in their authorship claims. The actual and fabricated entries of all the authors along with their citations were recorded in the Microsoft Office Excel 2007 for further analyses and interpretation using simple arithmetic calculations.

Findings

The results show that the h-index of authors obtained from the Google Scholar should not be approved at its face value as the variations exist in the publication count and citations, which ultimately affect their h-index and i10 index. The results reveal that the majority of the authors have variations in publication count (58%), citations (58%), h-index (42%) and i10-index (54%). The magnitude of variation in the number of publications, citations, h-index and i10-index is very high, especially for the top-ranked authors.

Research limitations/implications

The scope of the study is strictly restricted to the faculty members of library and information science and cannot be generalized across disciplines. Further, the scope of the study is limited to Google Scholar and caution needs to be taken to extend results to other databases like Web of Science and Scopus.

Practical implications

The study has practical implications for authors, publishers, and academic institutions. Authors must stop the unethical research practices; publishers must adopt techniques to overcome the problem and academic institutions need to take precautions before hiring, recruiting, promoting and allocating resources to the candidates on the face value of the Google Scholar h-index. Besides, Google needs to work on the weak areas of Google Scholar to improve its efficacy.

Originality/value

The study brings to light the new ways of manipulating bibliometric indicators like h-index, and i10-index provided by Google Scholar using false authorship claims.

中文翻译：

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作者是否公平对待或操纵 Google Scholar h-index？

目的

该研究的主要目的是审查谷歌学术档案并找到问题的答案，“作者是否公平对待或操纵谷歌学术文献计量指标，如 h-index 和 i10-index？”

设计/方法/方法

作者仔细检查了声称拥有 21,022 篇出版物的前 50 名图书馆和科学研究人员的 Google Scholar 档案。对所有 21,022 份出版物的书目信息（如作者身份和主题详细信息）进行了验证，以识别其作者声明中的准确性、差异和操纵。所有作者的实际和虚构条目以及他们的引文都记录在 Microsoft Office Excel 2007 中，以便使用简单的算术计算进行进一步分析和解释。

发现

结果表明，从 Google Scholar 获得的作者的 h-index 不应该被批准，因为发表次数和引用存在差异，最终影响他们的 h-index 和 i10 指数。结果显示，大多数作者在发表次数 (58%)、引用次数 (58%)、h-index (42%) 和 i10-index (54%) 方面存在差异。出版物数量、引用次数、h-index 和 i10-index 的变化幅度非常大，尤其是对于排名靠前的作者。

研究限制/影响

研究范围严格限于图书馆和信息科学系的教职员工，不能跨学科一概而论。此外，该研究的范围仅限于 Google Scholar，需要谨慎地将结果扩展到其他数据库，如 Web of Science 和 Scopus。

实际影响

该研究对作者、出版商和学术机构具有实际意义。作者必须停止不道德的研究行为；出版商必须采取技术来克服这个问题，学术机构需要在招聘、招聘、推广和分配资源给谷歌学术 H 指数面值的候选人之前采取预防措施。此外，谷歌还需要在谷歌学术的薄弱环节做些工作，以提高其效能。

原创性/价值

该研究揭示了操纵文献计量指标的新方法，例如谷歌学术使用虚假作者声明提供的 h-index 和 i10-index。