R Observatory: Metrics for scholar version 1.0.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

scholar

1.0.0Package record

Analyse Citation Data from Google Scholar

2packages dependsuggested by 1

42Kdownloads / year

34.8%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Guangchuang YuCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Issues ↗

Provides tools to retrieve, analyse, and format publication and citation data from Google Scholar profiles. It supports profile lookup, publication records, citation histories, scholar comparison, coauthor networks, journal ranking queries, CV-ready publication lists, and citation metric summaries.

Changes in 1.0.0

convert the package vignette from R Markdown to Quarto and expand the feature overview (2026-07-07, Tue)
fix author_position() normalized-position typo for missing author positions (2026-07-07, Tue, #105)
retry transient Google Scholar 404 responses before returning unavailable data (2026-07-07, Tue, #108)
fix get_complete_authors() URL construction and tolerate Scholar IDs with trailing query parameters (2026-07-07, Tue, #117)
use Google Scholar's full colleagues list when retrieving coauthors to avoid the profile sidebar limit (2026-07-07, Tue, #120)
add get_publications_all_authors() to fill truncated publication author lists only when needed (2026-07-07, Tue, #122)
add search_scholar_ids() to return all author IDs from paginated Google Scholar author search results (2026-07-07, Tue, #88)
add get_publication_metrics() and get_scholar_metrics() for h-index, g-index, i10, i50, and i100 metrics (2026-07-07, Tue)
make citation history parsing tolerate mismatched Google Scholar chart labels and values (2026-07-07, Tue)
make predict_h_index() return NA instead of erroring when publication metrics are unavailable (2026-07-07, Tue)
improve publication citation count parsing for formatted or struck-through Google Scholar values (2026-07-07, Tue)
restore get_journalrank() with browser-like SCImago CSV download to avoid HTTP 403 errors (2026-07-07, Tue)

Show all changes in 1.0.0Hide the rest of the changes in 1.0.0

fix Google Scholar HTML encoding conversion to avoid example failures when pages contain Latin-1 characters (2026-07-07, Tue)

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("scholar", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("YuLab-SMU/scholar")

Development version from YuLab-SMU/scholar. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-scholar

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-scholar

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-scholar

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed). We list this channel from recorded autoCRAN download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 2.1 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-04
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK13 OK2026-07-08
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-07-06
OK13 OK2026-06-09

Show 4 earlier changesHide 4 earlier changes

ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-08
OK13 OK2026-05-08
WARNING12 OK, 1 WARNING2026-05-07
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 1.0.0

README· In the repository, left out of the releaseVignettesYes · 1 · dynamicNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 1.0.0Citation fileYes · software entry onlyWebsitenot declared in DESCRIPTION

Help pages: 32 (2 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 18%2 run in a plain check · 2 only when donttest examples are enabled (R CMD check --as-cran) · 7 never run
Exported functions with examples: 37%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 87%
Help pages citing references: 0%

Vignettes (1)

scholar introduction HTML

How these are measured

Downloads

42K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #2,153 · ~115/day · ~3.5K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

2.6K30 days

8.2K90 days

42K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on188 r2u6 autocran2K conda_forge135 c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

yulab-smu/scholar ↗Organization: YuLab-SMUFork of jkeirstead/scholar

53Stars

7Forks

0Open issues

0Open PRs

0Releases

288Commits

19Commit identities

288 commits · Last activity 2026-07-07 · 0% stars, 30d

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 67%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 57
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 12

Stars over time

2025-07-19 · 462026-08-24 · 53

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

5 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 3 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/yulab-smu/scholar on 2026-10-18.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and on R-devel

Reproducibility and dev environment (1)

Makefile

CRAN release process (2)

cran-comments.mdCRAN-SUBMISSION

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v3 (2026-09-26)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

17 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing scholar adds 61 packages (37 with compiled code, 52 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: stringi 11 MB, ggplot2 6.0 MB, igraph 4.8 MB.

Depends (1)

R >= 4.1.0

Imports (10)

R.cache dplyr httr rlang rvest stringr xml2 tidygraph ggraph ggplot2

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (7)

knitr quarto rmarkdown roxygen2 spelling testthat (>= 2.1.0)yulab.utils

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

2direct

0indirect

Imports 2

Suggested by 1

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

CoTiMA margaret

Suggests, most downloaded first

easystats

How these are counted

Code & Tests

People & History

People (7)

Guangchuang Yu

Author, Maintainer since 0.1.6 (2018) · added in 0.1.6

Gregory Jefferis

Author · added in 0.1.6

James Keirstead

Author

Jorge Cimentada

Contributor · added in 0.1.7

Max Czapanskiy

Contributor · added in 0.1.7

Gordon Getzinger

Contributor · added in 0.2.0

Dominique Makowski

Contributor · added in 0.2.0

Previously maintained by James Keirstead (0.1.0 to 0.1.4).

Releases (15)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

1.0.0Latest
record
2026-07-07 · current release · diff ↗ ·
added 4 exports
get_publication_metrics, get_publications_all_authors, get_scholar_metrics, search_scholar_ids
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
0.2.6
record
2026-02-26 · diff ↗
0.2.5
record
2025-06-26 · diff ↗
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
0.2.4
record
2022-08-09 · diff ↗ ·
added 5 exports
get_article_scholar_url, get_publication_abstract, get_publication_data_extended, get_publication_date, get_publication_url
0.2.3
record
2022-06-23 · diff ↗ ·
removed 1 export
get_impactfactor

added 1 export
format_publications
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
0.2.2
record
2021-07-13 · diff ↗
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
0.2.1
record
2021-04-28 · diff ↗
0.2.0
record
2021-01-12 · diff ↗ ·
added 5 exports
author_position, get_journalrank, get_scholar_id, get_scholar_resp, set_scholar_mirror
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26

Show 13 earlier eventsHide 13 earlier events

0.1.7
record
2018-07-03 · diff ↗ ·
added 4 exports
get_coauthors, get_complete_authors, get_impactfactor, plot_coauthors
0.1.6
record
2018-05-23 · diff ↗
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03
0.1.4
record
2015-11-21 · diff ↗
0.1.3
record
2015-09-29 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
get_article_cite_history
R
R 3.2.0 released · 2015-04-16
0.1.2
record
2014-08-22 · diff ↗
R
R 3.1.0 released · 2014-04-10
0.1.1
record
2013-10-28 · diff ↗
0.1.0
record
2013-10-22
R
R 3.0.0 released · 2013-04-03

Package metadata

First published: 2013-10-22
Total releases: 15 / 13 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI
Minimum R: ≥ 4.1.0
Download size: 47 KB

Appears in task views

Web Technologies and Services

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' entry:

citation("scholar")

The package provides a citation file, so citation() returns the authors' own entry.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for scholar version 1.0.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-21. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-21, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

Report a problem with this page →