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For math papers it is possible to check which other papers cite it. Can we have the same thing for Mathoverflow questions/answers? It would be nice to see next to the panels "related" and "linked", a panel displaying citing articles/pdf files. I have no clue how much work this would be.

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    $\begingroup$ Do you mean papers that cited the question? $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Nov 2, 2017 at 11:14
  • $\begingroup$ Maybe he means other posts in MO that cite this post. Or maybe posts anywhere in the SE system that cite this post. Or maybe web sites anywhere that cite this post. $\endgroup$ Nov 2, 2017 at 13:07
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    $\begingroup$ @Gerald: The first one is a subset of the "Linked" panel; the second one is a nice idea, but it could cause a lot of noise sometimes, and might be a bit more difficult to implement; and the last one is ridiculous to even suggest. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Nov 2, 2017 at 13:54
  • $\begingroup$ @Asaf Yes, I did mean the last one - why is it ridiculous? $\endgroup$
    – domotorp
    Nov 2, 2017 at 20:50
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    $\begingroup$ Because journal sites or mathscinet have paid workers to maintain these citation databases, and here nobody is ever going to get paid. And having them an automatic script is a huge opening to spammers. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Nov 2, 2017 at 20:58
  • $\begingroup$ @Asaf Google scholar and tons of other sites have an automatic script. I don't know how they do it for papers, but with my limited CS knowledge I thought that the same thing could be done for MO posts. $\endgroup$
    – domotorp
    Nov 3, 2017 at 9:35
  • $\begingroup$ The day MathOverflow, nay, StackExchange, has the same computation power and data access as Google do, we can reopen this debate. Not to mention that Google Scholar is not nearly as good as MathSciNet or ZB or databases which are maintained by actual humans. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Nov 3, 2017 at 9:39
  • $\begingroup$ @Asaf I agree that MSN and ZB are better, but here the goal would not be to maintain a correct database but rather to have any sort of list that shows that the www links to these posts. As I said, I have absolutely no clue how complicated this thing is. If you say it's computationally unfeasible, I'm happy to accept it (even as an answer). $\endgroup$
    – domotorp
    Nov 3, 2017 at 20:15
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    $\begingroup$ @domotorp So you would expect to get there something like the output of Google Scholar. For example, this is what I get when searching for "http://mathoverflow.net/q/143950". Some questions are even in Google Scholar database, so you can get the citations, like here for the question A family of words counted by the Catalan numbers 131585. So you would expect to get something similar to what you get in those search result? $\endgroup$ Nov 5, 2017 at 10:13
  • $\begingroup$ And for comparison I'll add also searches on the web (so not restricted to Google Scholar, i.e., to papers): question 131585 and question 234492. (I have tried one of the two examples above. The other one I chose because it is cited in Wikipedia.) $\endgroup$ Nov 5, 2017 at 10:18
  • $\begingroup$ @Martin Brilliant, what the Google Scholar search returns is exactly what I had in mind! Do you think we can have that in a right panel? $\endgroup$
    – domotorp
    Nov 5, 2017 at 17:09
  • $\begingroup$ @domotorp I guess that probably somebody more experienced would be able to say more about whether this is doable and whether it would be legal. But reading answer to this question, it seems to me that fetching this from Google Scholar is probably not the way to go: How to get permission from Google to use Google Scholar Data, if needed? $\endgroup$ Nov 9, 2017 at 14:02
  • $\begingroup$ @Martin actually, in the comment it says that it is possible to become a "Google Certified Partner" to obtain permission. This should be of course done somewhere from the top of Mathoverflow... $\endgroup$
    – domotorp
    Nov 9, 2017 at 14:31

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