Publish or Perish

Use Publish or Perish (PoP) for supplementary citation discovery and citation-record analysis. PoP is desktop software that retrieves and analyses citation records from external sources. It is not a bibliographic database of its own. In this SLR activity, use it to explore records and citation trails; do not substitute its result set for your formal database searches.

Topic & Scope worksheet All tool guides

01 · Access and sign in

Get ready to use Publish or Perish

Download the installer from the official Harzing website for Windows or macOS and install it on your computer. Open PoP, choose a data source, and check that source’s requirements. Some sources are publicly accessible; others may require an API key, institutional access or a login. Follow the current source-specific instructions in the official manual.

Official PoP download and information ↗User manual: using PoP ↗Data sources and requirements ↗Windows installation ↗macOS installation ↗

02 · Use it for SLR

Features that matter in this stage

Multiple data sources

Choose among the available sources shown in your current PoP installation.

Keyword/title/author queries

Search by topic words or by a known seed paper, depending on the source.

Citation metrics

Inspect citation counts and related indicators as discovery clues, not quality scores.

Export

Save selected results for later inspection and record the exact query and data source.

Keep the SLR boundary clear. This is a topic-discovery exercise. Your formal search strategy, search history and screening decisions belong in the relevant Stage 1 steps.

03 · Hands-on exercise

Try it with your own topic

Download PoP from the official Harzing page and install the appropriate version for your operating system.
Open PoP and select a source you are allowed to use. Note any API-key or login requirement.
Search a short phrase from your topic or the exact title of a verified seed article.
Inspect two or three results. Open each promising record at its original source and verify title, year and DOI.
If useful, export the results and record the query, source and date. Keep this separate from the formal database search log.
Carry one verified article or useful citation lead back to Topic & Scope.

Copy-ready prompt / search instruction

Use Publish or Perish to explore [KEYWORD OR EXACT SEED-PAPER TITLE] using [SELECTED DATA SOURCE]. Before interpreting the results, record the selected source, exact query and search date. Check promising records at their original source. Do not label these results as Scopus or Web of Science records unless they were retrieved from that specific source.

Check before you continue: PoP depends on external sources, and their coverage, access requirements and metadata differ. Citation counts do not prove relevance, quality or methodological strength. Record which source you actually used.

04 · Take the result back

What should go into Topic & Scope?

One verified citation lead and a note of the external data source, query and date.

Keep the output concise. Record the tool that suggested it, then verify any article or database claim at its source. Do not paste an unverified AI answer as evidence.

Record verified output in Topic & Scope →Return to tool directory

Related Stage 1 work: Research Questions · Keyword Matrix & Boolean Search · Search Log