Workshop: Getting the most out of Google Scholar
What does Google Scholar find?
Google Scholar is
Google Scholar is a search engine that provides links to full-text articles to which the University Library system subscribes or to articles made freely available by the publisher or author via pre-prints.
"We index papers, not journals." https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html#coverage
"Google Scholar includes journal and conference papers, theses and dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research. You'll find works from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies and university repositories, as well as scholarly articles available anywhere across the web. Google Scholar also includes court opinions and patents." https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html#coverage
What does Google Scholar find?
| Includes | Excludes |
|
|
Why use Google Scholar
Why Use Google Scholar?
Google Scholar is not a replacement for subject databases available through the WMU Libraries. Instead, Google Scholar complements the collection and expands your research.
| Pros | Cons |
|
|
Caution is needed
- Google Scholar does not index all scholarly articles; therefore, some articles citing the item under study may not be counted.
- Google Scholar includes citations from an array of sources in its cited by calculation, including PowerPoints and Word documents, and gives everything an equal rank.
- Author names can be tricky to search and the results can vary greatly depending on how the name is entered; we recommend searching only the author's last name and combining that with the main title in quotations.
- Variants in how the item is cited can result in more than one entry for the item under study.
- The term "citation" in brackets [CITATION] at the beginning of an entry, indicates that the full text of the item is not accessible through Google Scholar. Use Library Search to try to locate the complete record.
*Fun Fact
Google Scholar accidentally parsed information from a school lunch menu.
Visit Alex Klotz's full account on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlexanderRKlotz/status/1252389218514427909?s=20