While googling ‘Google Scholar Metrics’ for my post two weeks ago, I discovered Microsoft Academics. As with other project such as Bing Maps, Microsoft tries to compete with Google. And as Google, Microsoft seems to label now every new service it offers ‘beta’. Microsoft Academic offers immediately several (visualisation) tools that Google Scholar doesn’t such as h-index, genealogy maps, co-authors maps, academic maps…
But the major problem with Microsoft Academic is its database. If Google Scholar does cover quite a large field – even most of the articles published by a historian on psychiatry are referenced – Microsoft Academic seems not to be particularly strong for the humanities. So most of the nice tools proposed by Microsoft Academic are not very useful.
I must have however admit that the list of the most important journals in history, proposed by Microsoft Academic, does already be closer to my personal list, even if it continues to overrate the journals dedicated to the sciences studies, which appear central in the history field on Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic but are rather marginal in the universities.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Benoit Majerus (April 23, 2012). Microsoft Academic a more powerful tool than Google Scholar, but… notebook. Retrieved December 6, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/r7i4
sorry, but in how far is this tool powerful? i checked some people from my circles and there are plenty of errors and misattributions… 🙁
@Bob Reuter. Perhaps I should you use the following words: “a potentially powerful tool”? The problem is indeed the database, on which Microsoft Academic is based. For myself and for some other colleagues in history it is crap. It seems also to be not very convincing for psychology and education sciences.