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Three months earlier, I published a preprint version of my paper and it appeared immediately on my Google Scholar account.
Recently, I published my paper in a journal. However, this citation/version has not been on Google Scholar. Thus, only the old preprint version is available on my profile.
Can I manually add an article with the journal citation and then merge it with the preprint version? If my paper get any citations, would these citations appear on my Google Scholar profile?
You could do what you suggest, but a simpler solution would be to simply edit the entry in your profile with the correct details (journal name, page numbers, date, etc.). If Google Scholar later creates a separate entry because it did not realize that the two are the same, you can do the merge at that time.
If Google Scholar correctly recognizes your paper's journal and preprint version as the same paper, then (usually) citations should automatically get added to the existing entry.
You can manually add an article to Google Scholar.
To add publications, click on the + button and select from the list of the following options:
c) Add article manually: If the article cannot be found you can create an entry manually. First choose the publication type at the top of the form then fill in as many fields as possible
Then, you can merge the manually-added article with the preprint.
Select both versions of the article. Next, choose the "Merge" option from the Actions menu. You will then see both citations for the article listed. Click "Select" next to the best citation to the article (you can edit it later if you wish). This will merge the two versions.
Whether or not the citations will be counted is a question only Google can answer.
