How to sort Google Scholar search results by number of citations?

Question

There appears to be no way to sort Google Scholar search results by any field. If somebody has figured out a way to do so, please share.

Answer 1

http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm

Some points:

1. this only is reliable if your search returns fewer than 1000 results
2. you can chop your search up and combine the pieces via CSV files and excel, to sort a larger search
3. PoP also sorts by 'cites per year', which removes the bias in favor of older articles, which have had more time to accrue citations. However, this is sometimes misleading for books and articles which have been reprinted or had new editions, since all of the citations are sometimes counted for the new edition.

For smaller sets of references that aren't from the same searches, you can use this plugin for Zotero, although it doesn't worth with the standalone version of zotero yet:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/zotero-scholar-citations/

Answer 2

Google Scholar offers a way to filter the search results by field, though not necessarily sort them. To do so:

• Go to Google Scholar, and click Advanced Scholar Search

• Enter your search terms

• Under "Collections", there is a subcategory "Articles and patents". This category offers two radio button options: "search articles in all subject areas" and "search only articles in the following subject areas". The latter option provides subjects like "Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities" and "Physics, Astronomy, and Planetary Science"

• Click "Search Scholar"

Once you open your results, there will be a series of checkboxes under the search bar that let you choose which, if any, subject areas you would like to limit your search to.

Google Scholar will also allow you to search for legal decisions from certain courts.

Answer 3

If you want to find out what articles are most relevant to your query, then Google Scholar already does a pretty good job in sorting them. If the search query is rather broad (for example "Schrödinger") then the result list will mostly be sorted by the number of citations.

If your query is rather narrow, on the other hand (for example "nonlinear time-independent Schrödinger"), then Google tries to provide you with the most relevant results first (namely nonlinear time-independent Schrödinger equations) rather than putting articles high on the list which have a lot of citations but aren't exactly about what you're looking for.

That said, I'm also feeling a little uncomfortable in Google trying to find out what I actually want.