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I publish under a single name (no last name). As Google Scholar does not recognise me as an author I face several issues with citation counts and wrong bibliographic data being available in Google Scholar. I have reported this issue several times through the contact us form for Scholar but I just get an automated response from them. What can I do?

Example: When you search my name in scholar, my papers appear not because I am an author but because I am a word in the paper. Google does not index me as an author. So, if some one cites my work as Abhishta et. al. Google has no idea who is being cited.

This situation is a different from the questions that are asked before on this forum as the former questions were discussing problems that journals require multiple names for an author but in this case, the publisher is fine with having a single name and the paper is already published. However there are problems with Scholar indexing the data of the paper.

First author indexed by Google as

Actual authors of the paper

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  • 5
    Have you already created a google scholar profile for you?
    – FuzzyLeapfrog
    Commented Jul 4, 2018 at 3:18
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    As far as I know, there are quite a few users on this site who have a single name. I think this is not an individual problem. And we do have quite a few Google Scholar related questions before . Vote to "Leave Open".
    – Nobody
    Commented Jul 4, 2018 at 8:26
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    Sadly, the virtual world hasn't caught up with the real world. If you are building such systems or have influence over them in any way, I'd suggest you consider this issue seriously and find a solution. There is at least one CS professor at MIT with a similar issue. The OP here might seek him out.
    – Buffy
    Commented Jul 4, 2018 at 13:27
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    @BurakUlgut Not a duplicate of that. This is asking about a practical consequence.
    – aeismail
    Commented Jul 4, 2018 at 13:40
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    Not having a surname makes you a nonentity in many bureaucratic environments. You have the choice to waste a lot of time and energy on insisting, or just style yourself a surname. Use you existing first name if it really doesn't matter for you.
    – Karl
    Commented Jul 4, 2018 at 19:37

2 Answers 2

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Google scholar is imperfect. It's based on an automatic parser, rather than human curation. I've seen it make all kinds of mistakes.

What can you do? You already have set up a profile that has the correct information. You can try contacting Google, but don't expect much from them. I doubt they have the resources to deal with everyone who contacts them with an issue. However, they are always improving their algorithm and this may get resolved.

The only other thing I think you can do is alter how your name appears on papers to conform to western expectations, as suggested in this question: I have only one name shown in my ID card. How do I write my name (surname) in research paper or article?

Overall, I wouldn't worry too much about it. It is easy enough to find your publications online and any human reader will understand that you are mononymous.

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Dirty hack: write your papers under your one name, twice. (Prince Prince)

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    This wouldn't really work for somebody who already has an established history of publishing under one name (Magneto).
    – penelope
    Commented Dec 11, 2019 at 14:38

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