Microsoft Academic Search and Google Scholar Citations: Comparative Analysis of Author Profiles

This article offers a comparative analysis of the personal profiling capabilities of the two most important free citation-based academic search engines, namely, Microsoft Academic Search (MAS) and Google Scholar Citations (GSC). Author profiles can be useful for evaluation purposes once the advantages and the shortcomings of these services are described and taken into consideration. In total, 771 personal profiles appearing in both the MAS and the GSC databases were analyzed. Results show that the GSC profiles include more documents and citations than those in MAS but with a strong bias toward the information and computing sciences, whereas the MAS profiles are disciplinarily better balanced. MAS shows technical problems such as a higher number of duplicated profiles and a lower updating rate than GSC. It is concluded that both services could be used for evaluation proposes only if they are applied along with other citation indices as a way to supplement that information.