How to create a citation alert for a paper without citation in Google Scholar

Question

In theory, creating a citation alert with Google Scholar is easy. Search for the paper, click on the "Cited by X" link just below the result, scroll down and click on "Create alert", and finally confirm by clicking on "Create alert".

However this works only for articles that already have at least one citation. If an article has never been cited, the "Cited by X" link doesn't show up. This is annoying because as an academic researcher I would like to be alerted when a given article is cited for the first time. Do you know of a way to work around that limitation?

Answer 1

Short version

Replace the pound signs in the following URL with the cluster number of the article of interest https://scholar.google.com/scholar_alerts?view_op=create_alert_options&hl=en&alert_params=hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D2005%26cites%3D####################%26scipsc%3D.

Long version

None of the other couple of answers worked for me, so I found a new way of doing this. It involves finding the cluster number of your article, as described by @Calimo in the other answer and then modifying the alert URL of an already created alert.

1. Click the Save button under a search result that is pointing to the paper of interest (this adds that paper to your library)

2. Open My Library, click on the article, and then scroll down to find "scholar articles" - that link (but not the one at the top) contains the 20 digit identifier you need. Copy this link and paste in into a text editor. The number after cluster= is the one you want.

3. Search for an article that you know has citations and click "Cited by".

4. Scroll down to the bottom of the first page where there is a little mail icon that says "Create alert". Right click and copy this URL and paste it into your text editor.

5. In the alert URL, replace the number that comes after cites%3D, with the cluster number from your article of interest.

6. Copy and paste this new URL into your browser and a page will appear asking if you want to create an alert for this article.

While it seems like the final URL always follows the same format, I outlined the entire process in case that URL would change in the future.

Example

Step 2 URL

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&cluster=3568708134260123033&btnI=1&hl=en

Step 4 URL

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_alerts?view_op=create_alert_options&hl=en&alert_params=hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D2005%26cites%3D17056599553763497017%26scipsc%3D

Final Alert URL

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_alerts?view_op=create_alert_options&hl=en&alert_params=hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D2005%26cites%3D3568708134260123033%26scipsc%3D

Answer 2

Short answer:

1. Get the cluster ID (20 digits) of your article
2. Plug it in the end of the following URL: https://scholar.google.ch/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&as_sdt=5&cites=
3. Click on the "Create alert" button in the left pane of the page.

Long answer

Prerequisites: you need a Google Scholar profile for this.

1. Find the cluster ID of your article

_{(This exact procedure requires the paper to be in your library. Otherwise you'll need to be creative, the cluster ID is available in many other ways.)}

1. On "My Citations" page, you have a table with 3 columns: "Title / Author", "Cited by" and "Year". Scroll down until you reach your uncited article and click on its linked title.
2. A modal window with more details about the article opens. At the bottom of the window, you have a line that is entitled "Scholar articles". Hover this link and notice it contains with cluster= followed by a large number.
3. Copy this link (right click > Copy Link Location in Firefox looks like the easiest way to go) and save the long 20-digits number after the cluster= part (something like 12909901205937540955). This number is the cluster ID of your article in Scholar's database.

2. Find the current citations search URL

1. Go back to your profile, and click on any number in the Cited by column. This performs a search for citations of an article with a citation.
2. Check the URL of this page: it ends with an other 20-digits ID of an article with citations after the cites= part.
3. If you don't have any cited paper, do a normal search and use the "Cited by" link underneath a search result instead.
4. You should get something like this (as of September 2018): https://scholar.google.ch/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&as_sdt=5&cites=.

3. Get the citations page

1. Now plug 1 and 2 together, for instance https://scholar.google.ch/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&as_sdt=5&cites=12909901205937540955
2. Open this page in your browser.
3. On the page that loads, you'll see "Sorry, we didn't find any articles that cite..." Despite this fact, you have a "Create alert". This link will now allow you to create a citation alert for your article.

Answer 3

Google Scholar allows you to create search alerts, which don't depend on your article having already been cited. You could create search parameters for your paper and create an alert:

• Do a search
• Click on the Alerts icon at the top (the envelope)
• Sign in
• Create and name the alert

As I mentioned in my comment, Indiana University's Journal and Search Alerts page offers guidelines for creating citation alerts through a number of academic journal databases (including EBSCO, JSTOR, SAGE, SpringerLink and Web of Knowledge).

Their Have You Been Cited? guide is also useful for Web of Science and Web of Knowledge citations.