Accuracy: Merge duplicates
Publish or Perish tutorial
Note: This tutorial was originally written for Publish or Perish version 4 and all screenshots come from this version. However, the information as such is also applicable for later versions of Publish or Perish.
See also the blogpost: How to merge “stray citation" records?
For most authors you will notice duplicate or near-duplicate articles in the Publish or Perish Results list. These duplicates may be due to one or more of the following:
- Sloppy referencing. Not all references to an author's work are accurate. Small differences in the names of the authors, the article's title, or its source may cause the same article to appear more than once.
- Google Scholar or Microsoft Academic parsing the publication from more than one source.
Non standard publications have more duplicates
The former will happen more often with publications that are of a “non-standard” format, such as books, book chapters, conference papers, and software as – unlike journal articles – there is no universally agreed way to reference them. Publish or Perish itself for instance is referenced in more than thirty different ways.
A white paper on my web-site has three different records.
Effect of duplicates on citation analysis
The effect on the citation analysis is that:
- The total number of articles may come out higher than the actual number, because duplicates are counted separately.
- The citations per paper may come out lower, for the same reason.
- The h-index and g-index may come out differently, because citations are spread over the duplicates.
Merge duplicates by simple drag and drop
Since Version 3.0 of Publish or Perish, duplicates can be merged into the master record, simply by dragging the stray citation onto the master record. The merged record of the white paper above is shown in the screenshot below.
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Copyright © 2022 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Thu 2 Jun 2022 10:50
Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita 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.