# Language Bias in the Google Scholar Ranking Algorithm
## 4 Results  
In line with previous research [23; 24], an analysis of our data verified a high correlation between the ranking by the number of citations received and Google Scholar's native ranking. The high value of these coefficients indicates that a document receiving a high ranking on the basis of the number of citations received is also highly positioned in Google Scholar's native ranking. However, when we focused our analysis solely on documents written in languages other than English, we detected an unusual ranking pattern, one that had not previously been identified. This pattern can be defined in terms of the following two characteristics:  
1. In multilingual searches in Google Scholar, documents written in languages other than English fail, in the main, to appear among the first 900 results on the search page (i.e., they present a ranking >900). 2. The Google Scholar ranking algorithm works differently for documents written in languages other than English, as it does not consider the number of citations received as the main ranking factor. This implies that while documents written in English are awarded a good position based on the number of citations received, this same factor, even when the number of citations is high, does not benefit documents written in other languages. In other words, in multilingual searches in Google Scholar, the widely recognized positioning factor based on the number of citations received is not applicable to documents that are not published in English. Below, we present in detail the data tables and scatter plots that corroborate these conclusions. Data Analysis Identifying the Different Ranking Pattern Presented by Documents Written in Languages other than English  
Tables 2-4 show the percentages of documents in languages other than in English which failed to appear among the top 900 search results. It is evident that they constitute the vast majority: 92.1% in the case of searches by year, 85.3% in those by author and 89.7% in those by keyword. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multicolumn{1}{c}{\multirow{2}{*}{**Year**}} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Documents Ranked above 900 in Searches by Year**} \\ \hline \multicolumn{1}{c}{\multirow{2}{*}{**Year**}} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**All Results**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Results for English**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**Results for Non-English**} \\ \cline{2-10}  & \#Items & \textgreater{}900 & \% & \#Items & \textgreater{}900 & \% & \#Items & \textgreater{}900 & \% \\ \hline
2000 & 995 & 95 & 95 & 920 & 23 & 2.5 & 75 & 72 & 96.0 \\ \hline
2001 & 993 & 93 & 9.4 & 922 & 26 & 2.8 & 71 & 67 & 94.4 \\ \hline
2002 & 995 & 95 & 9.5 & 921 & 26 & 2.8 & 74 & 69 & 93.2 \\ \hline
2003 & 993 & 93 & 9.4 & 908 & 13 & 1.4 & 85 & 80 & 94.1 \\ \hline
2004 & 989 & 89 & 9.0 & 903 & 7 & 0.8 & 86 & 82 & 95.3 \\ \hline
2005 & 993 & 93 & 9.4 & 908 & 16 & 1.8 & 85 & 77 & 90.6 \\ \hline
2006 & 994 & 94 & 9.5 & 913 & 17 & 1.9 & 81 & 77 & 95.1 \\ \hline
2007 & 985 & 85 & 8.6 & 888 & 3 & 0.3 & 97 & 82 & 84.5 \\ \hline
2008 & 996 & 96 & 9.6 & 917 & 19 & 2.1 & 79 & 77 & 97.5 \\ \hline
2009 & 989 & 89 & 9.0 & 909 & 12 & 1.3 & 80 & 77 & 96.3 \\ \hline
2010 & 994 & 94 & 9.5 & 915 & 20 & 2.2 & 79 & 74 & 93.7 \\ \hline
2011 & 987 & 87 & 8.8 & 900 & 5 & 0.6 & 87 & 82 & 94.3 \\ \hline
2012 & 991 & 91 & 9.2 & 920 & 26 & 2.8 & 71 & 65 & 91.5 \\ \hline
2013 & 982 & 82 & 8.4 & 877 & 1 & 0.1 & 105 & 81 & 77.1 \\ \hline
2014 & 988 & 88 & 8.9 & 893 & 4 & 0.4 & 95 & 84 & 88.4 \\ \hline Total & 14,864 & 1364 & 9.2 & 13,614 & 218 & 1.6 & 1250 & 1146 & 92.1 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Number of documents ranked above 900 in the case of searches by year.