Google Scholar (N) for Writing to Learn

Google Scholar (N) for Writing to Learn

"Stand on the Shoulders of Giants"... this is the slogan on http://scholar.google.com and it holds true.

Google Scholar allows information seekers to limit their queries to scholarly texts including "articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions" (from their "about" page) while eliminating commercial sites and user-generated wikis/online encyclopedias. In short Google Scholar allows for serious, meaningful research.

The search interface is the same as the mainstream www.google.com engine, but the results are vastly different.

For example a search for Learning Styles at www.google.com yields a mixed bag of academic sites, wikis, and advertisements.

A search for "Learning Styles" on Google Scholar yields only valid research sources.

There are a few drawbacks to using Scholar:

• You may download the basic citation information from any of the listings (whether we have a subscription or not) but will not get abstracts, subject headings, etc.
• When you search Google Scholar, you may find thousands of apparent citations, but GS will actually only let you view about the first 1000 of them.
• Many of the records are just links to citations not to the actual article; you will not be able to download these citations

(from: http://nmsu.libguides.com/content.php?pid=17613&sid=199269)

In addition some results will not be accessible unless you access them using credentials from a subscribing library.


Perhaps the best way to start is for students to understand that Google Scholar delivers citations (resources Google couldn't find online), patent materials, book excerpts, legal opinions, and abstracts for subscription-based journals. This wide variety of sources is much too big for effective research and must be winnowed down using critical thinking and the methods below.

Our students' searches may be more fruitful if they are sure to:
1. Turn off the "patents" search on the main page.
2. Ignore results with "abstract, book, or citation" in the results blurbs.
3. Focus on the results with "pdf" and "doc" to the right of their blurb. These will almost always give the full article and can be saved in a research folder (on desktop?) for future use.

Also knowing how to use the advanced options is a plus. These can be accessed just to the right of the "search" button on the Google Scholar main page. These let students...

• choose specific terms.
• choose the location of the terms (body or title)
• choose date ranges of publication
• choose subject area
• eliminate patent-related returns
• and more.

Finally, there are some ways to limit searches without going to the advanced page (these also work on the regular www.google.com page)

• the "+" operator makes sure your results include common words, letters or numbers that Google's search technology generally ignores, as in [+de knuth];
• the "-" operator excludes all results that include this search term, as in [flowers -author:flowers];
• phrase search only returns results that include this exact phrase, as in ["as you like it"];
• the "OR" operator returns results that include either of your search terms, as in [stock call OR put];
• the "intitle:" operator as in [intitle:mars] only returns results that include your search term in the document's title.

(from: http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/refinesearch.html)




For more information on using Google Scholar's advanced features, check out this short online tutorial from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.


For help implementing this valuable resource in your practice, contact your technology facilitator or the author.