Google Scholar’s susceptibility to spam
Bill Denton, a colleague of mine at York University, pointed me in the direction of an article titled “Academic Search Engine Spam and Google Scholar’s Resilience Against it.”
I was hoping to glean some ideas to legitimately help faculty disseminate their work, but this article was not useful in this regard. Nevertheless, it was fascinating!
I was impressed with the authors and their creativity in devising tests to see if Google Scholar could be manipulated by researchers. Some of the tests, such as creating a fake paper where a devious researcher would cite his or her own articles to increase rankings and visibility, were eye-opening.
To me, trying to game the system in such an open and public way would be unbelievably unwise, as one’s colleagues would see through this behaviour rather quickly, resulting in a severely damaged reputation.
Nevertheless, I highly recommend reading this paper as a method of raising awareness of what is possible with Google Scholar. It is important to be able to recognize spam as a means of protecting oneself against being misrepresented.
