Subject area selection no longer functional

In May 2012 Google Scholar redesigned its interface and integrated the advanced search page in its general search page. In doing so it removed the option to select specific subject areas. As a result subject area filtering is now no longer possible, neither in Google Scholar, nor in Publish or Perish.

Details

The Publish or Perish query panels on the Author impact, Journal impact, and General citations pages contain check boxes that allow you to narrow down your search to specific subject areas. These check boxes look as shown in the following screen shot:

Internally, selection or deselection of these check boxes cause different query parameters to be sent to the Google Scholar server when the query is performed. These parameters are still being sent, but since Google Scholar's redesign they are ignored by the Google Scholar server.

As a consequence, the query results do not take into account the selected subject areas, but cover all matching publications regardless of subject area. There is currently no workaround available for this problem.

Note: Be aware that typing in the name of a subject area as part of your query in the Google Scholar web-based interface, for example "Withington, economics", is not the same as the subject area selection that we discuss on the present page. (For a general explanation of the differences and commonalities between Publish or Perish and the Google Scholar web-based interface, see this Important note.)

More information

For more information see:

http://googlescholar.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/our-new-modern-look.html

If you would like to see subject areas reinstated, you can write to Google Scholar.

http://support.google.com/scholar/bin/request.py?contact_type=general