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I have a unique name, and use 3 names for my publications and the google scholar account I created. I’ve used this account for years and it works great. But recently, a new unverified account showed up, grabbing / claiming a ton of publications and citations that do not belong to me or any other specific author.

I would like report this account and have it deleted. But there doesn’t seem to be any way for me to do that.

Additional clarification: I’m concerned this is google’s AI creating a new account in my name, claiming publications and citations that don’t belong to me. This is concerning to me because I have a public profile. I don’t want anyone to assume this is my account, and that I’m the one claiming other people’s publications and citations.

The new account doesn’t have a picture or institutional affiliation. There is no way to contact the account that created it (at least not one I can find).

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    Not sure I understand what you mean by "I have a unique name, and use 3 names...". Can you please specify?
    – iwakun
    Commented Dec 21, 2023 at 15:03
  • @iwakun I assume that it's very unlikely that someone else would use that combination of 3 names as well so OP is worried about people confusing the 2 accounts.
    – mkennedy
    Commented Dec 21, 2023 at 17:00
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    Note that Google Scholar is pretty opaque and not especially helpful for a lot of things, including this. That is likely why you aren't getting answers here.
    – Buffy
    Commented Dec 21, 2023 at 17:20
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    @iwakun I assume it means that OP has an unusual three-part name like "Lucrezia Володимирівна 犬顔," which isn't likely to occur anywhere else, and has created a GScholar account with that name and has populated it with their own work, and now someone else has come along and created a different GScholar account for "Lucrezia Володимирівна 犬顔" and is populating it with someone else's publications. Of course, it could just be G's AI.
    – shoover
    Commented Dec 21, 2023 at 17:28
  • Is this profile using your picture and affiliation too?
    – AkiPhD
    Commented Dec 22, 2023 at 17:54

1 Answer 1

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You could contact the owner of the profile and ask them to change it. Otherwise, I doubt there is much you can do. Generally, what is listed on a profile is entirely up to the individual who created it.

Is there a particular concern you have?

On its own, a Google Scholar profile incorrectly claiming papers is only a minor problem. People can easily check who is actually an author. And it doesn't interfere with you claiming your papers on your profile.

There are many inaccuracies on the internet and we can't fix them all. Thus, even if you did contact Google Scholar, my guess is that they would decide that this is not a serious enough problem to warrant deleting the profile.

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    If someone creates a profile to falsify their research record (claiming papers they didn't write), in what amounts to research fraud, I hardly see it as a "drastic response" to delete that. Hell, one could even sue them for fraud, which is a far greater response than mere deletion of their GS profile.
    – Ben
    Commented Dec 21, 2023 at 21:49
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    @Ben You can file a lawsuit about anything, but I doubt that a lawsuit about the listing papers on a GS profile would get far in court. And I'd like to reiterate the first sentence of my answer: Any inaccuracy is primarily the responsibility of the person who created the profile.
    – Thomas Steinke
    Commented Dec 21, 2023 at 22:27
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    Maybe OP is more concerned about some sort of identity theft? But no one cares about an unverified google scholar account anyway.
    – The Doctor
    Commented Dec 22, 2023 at 10:57
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    In a lawsuit, OP would have to show they were actually harmed directly (at least for legal systems I know anything about). For example, if OP and this mystery profile creator were up for the same job, and they got the job rather than OP. For criminal fraud, they would have to use or intend to use (hard to prove) the profile for some (probably financial) gain. It seems extremely unlikely that an account collecting random citations has any value at all towards a fraudulent purpose.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented Dec 22, 2023 at 17:42
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    As an attorney I also think this could be classified as identity theft, but it depends on where they live, as the law is different across jurisdictions. It could also be qualified as defamation because people could think OP is claiming citations as their own to boost the metrics. But again, it depends on multiple factors. It could just be a case of homonymy.
    – AkiPhD
    Commented Dec 22, 2023 at 17:53

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