Pulling Works Cited from Google Scholar

[Deanna Meador]

I have a database hosted by FM Server that catalogs a list of my department's projects and publications (with supplemental materials, like PDFs, etc.). The database is web-published via WebDirect and is linked to from our main website so that users can filter, sort, and search our listings.

I would like to be able to pull into our database the number of times a publication has been cited from Google Scholar. Right now, I have a web viewer on the database record for each publication that shows the Google Scholar page for that pub where the information will come from and I have a calculation field that gets the content of the webviewer with this formula where "GoogleScholar1" is the name of the webviewer:

GoogleScholar_web = GetLayoutObjectAttribute ( "GoogleScholar1"; "content")

This field contains text that looks like this (this is just a section):

...... class="gsc_value">The Journal of Early Adolescence</div></div><div class="gs_scl"><div class="gsc_field">Volume</div><div class="gsc_value">32</div></div><div class="gs_scl"><div class="gsc_field">Issue</div><div class="gsc_value">5</div></div><div class="gs_scl"><div class="gsc_field">Pages</div><div class="gsc_value">621-649</div></div><div class="gs_scl"><div class="gsc_field">Publisher</div><div class="gsc_value">SAGE Publications</div></div><div class="gs_scl"><div class="gsc_field">Description</div><div class="gsc_value" id="gsc_descr">Abstract To highlight individual and neighborhood interactions in the risk of adolescent <br>substance use, this study examined the moderating role of neighborhood disadvantage on <br>the relationship between pubertal development and adolescent girls&#39; substance use. <br>Drawing on the contextual amplification hypothesis, it was hypothesized that the effect of <br>pubertal development on substance use would vary by level of neighborhood disadvantage <br>and race. The sample included 5,591 adolescent girls from the National Longitudinal <b> ...</b></div></div><div class="gs_scl"><div class="gsc_field">Total citations</div><div class="gsc_value"><div style="margin-bottom:1em"><a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&amp;hl=en&amp;cites=15750230415528023900&amp;as_sdt=5">Cited by 8</a></div><div id="gsc_graph"><div id="gsc_graph_x"></div><div.......

I need to pull the number that follows the text "cited by". I have tried several different text functions, etc. and nothing has gotten me close to getting this to work. Any ideas would be appreciated. I don't normally have to pull content from a web viewer into a database so this is new to me. Thanks in advance!

 

 

Edited May 13, 2016 by Deanna Meador

[comment]

Extracting text from HTML is difficult and frustrating - esp. because the format can change at any moment and break your formula.

Still, in the absence of a viable alternative, try the following formula =

Let ( [
text = GoogleScholar_web ;
prefix = ">Cited by " ;
suffix = "<" ;

start = Position ( text ; prefix ; 1 ; 1 ) + Length ( prefix ) ;
end = Position ( text ; suffix ; start ; 1 )
] ;
Middle ( text ; start ; end - start )
)

Note:

1. This assumes the prefix string ">Cited by " does not appear earlier in the HTML code (you're only showing us a portion of it);

2. I am not sure why you need the GoogleScholar_web calculation field; you could reference the web-viewer directly in the calculation by defining text as:

text = GetLayoutObjectAttribute ( "GoogleScholar1"; "content") ; 

3. Hopefully it's clear you would be using this in a Set Field[] script step, to populate a Number field.

[Deanna Meador]

Thanks so much!  This worked like a charm :-)

I got rid of the extra field and incorporated the GetLayoutObjectAttribute piece into the Let function as you suggested.

Your help is greatly appreciated!