When the Google Scholar team announced Google Scholar Citations back in July, everyone was kind of disappointed that they only offered very closed access to the service. You could check the h-index of Albert Einstein, but not create an own profile with your very own publications. Last week, Google Scholar Citations finally left closed beta and is now freely accessible for all.

I created my profile and was surprised by the inconsistent UI and how difficult they made the process of adding my publications. I could not just upload a BibTeX file or link to my Mendeley profile. No, I had to search for my publications in Google Scholar. There is no intelligent support to ease that process (e.g. looking at the co-authors of my already added publications and then do better recommendations). However, the features of Google Scholar Citations are very helpful in assessing your own work. I’m looking forward to what the Google Scholar team is doing with the service in the future….