CitationMap is a Python tool designed for researchers to visualize the global distribution of their Google Scholar citations. It generates an interactive HTML map and a CSV file detailing citing authors' affiliations and locations, aiding in understanding research impact geographically.

How It Works

The tool scrapes Google Scholar for citation data associated with a user's profile ID. It then extracts affiliation information from citing authors, attempts to geolocate these affiliations using geopy, and visualizes the results on an interactive world map using folium. A affiliation_conservative option allows users to trade off precision for recall in affiliation identification.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Install via pip: pip install citation-map --upgrade
• Requires Python.
• Official User Guide: https://github.com/ChenLiu-1996/CitationMap#user-guide

Highlighted Details

• Generates an HTML citation world map and a CSV of citation details.
• Offers a affiliation_conservative option for precision/recall trade-off.
• Supports multiprocessing for significant speedups (tested on 1000+ citations).
• Allows manual editing of the CSV to regenerate the HTML map.

Maintenance & Community

• Developed by Chen Liu, a CS PhD Candidate at Yale University.
• Active development with recent updates in late 2024.
• Open to advice on web scraping stability and Google Scholar blocking issues.

Licensing & Compatibility

• License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International).
• Non-commercial use and requires share-alike distribution for derivative works.

Limitations & Caveats

The tool relies on Google Scholar's indexing and may underestimate citations if papers or authors are not indexed, or if affiliations are not reported or geolocatable. Web scraping can lead to CAPTCHA challenges or IP blocking by Google Scholar, especially with frequent use. Affiliation identification can be imperfect, potentially leading to mislocated pins or missed affiliations.