SASSAFRAS

Simple Automatic Scholar Sorter Appropriate For Researchers And Scientists (credit for the awesome acronym goes to Thomas Varley)

This is a small script that looks for unread Google Scholar Alerts emails in your Gmail account and saves each paper in a Google Spreadsheet as:

Title/ Authors - Journal/ URL of the paper/Date/ number of Alerts that contained the paper

note: an older version had a search query column now substituted with the email time-stamp, you can still access that option by changing the date_not_query variable.

The possibilities are endless

Personally, I have an extra column with a Data Validation drop-down menu so i can mark the papers as I go through them. One can write a script that sends emails with the list of papers marked in a specific way, or the script can run automatically every Monday, or the day after your journal club to get new ideas!

Take a look at the available functions for GoogleSheets and Gmail to customize your own script.

How does it work?

The script reads the unread Google Scholar Alerts emails

Then saves the article's information in a SpreadSheet separating published articles (in Papers) and pre-prints (in PrePrints)

The script can also automatically send an email of the top papers being added (defaults: 5 published and 5 pre-prints) ordered by the number of occurrences.

How to run it:

Open a new Google SpreadSheet
Go to Tools > Script Editor
Copy-paste the .gs files in the code folder.
Customize the variable so they can work with your account
sassafras.gs : change the SEARCH_QUERY variable so that it can detect your unread Google Scholar Alerts (test run it on your Gmail)
summary.gs : change the emailAddress variable to your Gmail address.
Choose the options that best suit you in sassafras.gs, or keep the following defaults:

del_emails // if true deletes the GoogleAlert emails as it reads their content otherwise it just marks them as "read";
send_summary // if true sends an email summary of the new top 10 papers added;
date_not_query // if true adds the date of the email in column 5, otherwise adds the subject of the GoogleAlert;
date_separator // if true adds a separator before writing the new papers' list in the GoogleSheet;
del_past // if true deletes past list of papers before adding the new one.

Run the save_email function.

OPTIONAL: substitute the RegEx for keyword search and sheets names in the labels variables in cleaning.gs if you need to clean/organize your list.
8.1 Run the run_labels function to move published papers in Papers to a new Sheet with the label name
8.2 Run the run_tag function to add a column to Preprints with the label assigned to the manuscript

The custom menu

The options.gs script has a function that will add a custom menu with selected sassafras functions to your SpreadSheet to make it easier to run.
To make it work the script just needs to be saved in your script editor, and refresh the page of your SpreadSheet.

How to run the script automatically every week

In Google Scripts go to Edit > Current project's triggers
It will open a new page saying No results - Try adjusting your filter criteria or create a new trigger
Click on create a new trigger