Google Scholar (GS) is a service that searches for scholarly articles and provides the number of citations, related papers, and formal citations for each article found. Google Scholar Metrics (GSM) is a related service that provides bibliometrics on publications, which can be used to explore journal growth by language. Journal articles are indexed by GSM at different points in time, for different languages, and for an increasing number of publications. Given these variables and an evolving environment of search engine technology used by GS, the authors investigated the stability and variation of journal rankings by GSM. Their methodology consisted of a sample data collection, data analysis, and recommendations. GSM measures for a sample of 1000 journals in ten languages were obtained from GSM at two different time points. Since GSM is an evolving service, they also collected coverage data (number of records) from GS and two commercial databases.

This paper will be of specific interest to bibliometric researchers. It is also of general interest because it shows the relative growth of scholarly activity: by individual, by discipline, and by language (country). For example, if this paper itself is entered into GS, we obtain links to nine other papers that reference it, 100 related papers, ten sources, and citations in Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), and Chicago formats. GSM, on the other hand, views data by journal source, discipline, and language. This analysis prompts our imaginations to consider the endless possibilities (opportunities and risks) for the future that could result from massive open-source analytics of high-level data.