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Google and Google Scholar Search Tips: Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a search engine that searches for scholarly research available on the web in a variety of disciplines. It looks for articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Remember that not everything will be available for free and not everything it finds will be peer-reviewed. You can always go back to the Database tab in this LibGuide for links to databases that WA has purchased for you to have access to scholarly resources.

Google Scholar

. For more info about Google Scholar and to get search tips, see Google Scholar About.

Google Scholar Search Tips

Finding recent papers:

Your search results are normally sorted by relevance, not by date. To find newer articles, try the following options in the left sidebar:

  1. click "Since Year" to show only recently published papers, sorted by relevance;
  2. click "Sort by date" to show just the new additions, sorted by date;
  3. click the envelope icon to have new results periodically delivered by email.

Locating the full text of an article:

Abstracts are freely available for most of the articles. Alas, reading the entire article may require a subscription. Here are a few things to try:

  1. click a link labeled [PDF] to the right of the search result;
  2. click "All versions" under the search result and check out the alternative sources;
  3. click "Related articles" or "Cited by" under the search result to explore similar articles.
  4. Go to the WA Library Databases and try to locate the article

Getting better answers:

  • If you're new to the subject, it may be helpful to pick up the terminology from secondary sources. E.g., a Wikipedia article for "overweight" might suggest a Scholar search for "pediatric hyperalimentation".

  • If the search results are too specific for your needs, check out what they're citing in their "References" sections. Referenced works are often more general in nature.

  • Similarly, if the search results are too basic for you, click "Cited by" to see newer papers that referenced them. These newer papers will often be more specific.

  • Explore! There's rarely a single answer to a research question. Click "Related articles" or "Cited by" to see closely related work, or search for author's name and see what else they have written.

Source: https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html