Do you use Google? Do you even know about Google Scholar? For some people, Google is the beginning and the end of their search process. Google has a very powerful search engine (not to mention the zillion other nifty tools they are constantly building), but it hasn't made accessible all the information of the world yet. Google Scholar is a good starting point, but after reading through this guide, you'll have a better idea of when and when not to use Google Scholar.
Jump to:
- What is Google Scholar?
- What will I find in Google Scholar?
- Facts to Consider
- Configuring Google Scholar to Work with Vanderbilt's FindIt@VU Service
- Google Book Search
- Google Search Tips
What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. Google Scholar searches a variety of undisclosed academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. The full text of many items is freely available online, although in some instances abstracts with links to pay-per-view document delivery services are displayed.
Yes, Google Scholar is fast, easy to use, and can lead to thousands of relevant, scholarly articles within seconds. But there are many other databases that may be more relevant and comprehensive for your research topic.
What will I find in Google Scholar?
When using Google Scholar, there are typically 5 categories of results:
- Full-text documents
- A link to a citation that may or may not have an abstract
- A link to the publisher’s website OR the Vanderbilt University Libraries' subscription
- Book citations
- Citations to other papers, newsletters, syllabi, and possibly other non-scholarly items
Facts to Consider
You might have to pay money for access!
Links for thousands of articles indexed in Google Scholar sometimes go to publishers'
websites, where access requires a subscriber's login or an access fee.
The library might have paid for it already.
Many of these same articles are available to you without additional fees since
the library pays the subscription. For example, our payments to EBSCO may
provide access to a variety of journal articles in the database Business
Source Premier, but it does not extend to accessing the very
same article or even journal at the publisher's website. Look for the "FindIt@VU" in the Google Scholar search results. This provides access to full-text journals
online for Vanderbilt University subscriptions. Don't see "FindIt@VU" anywhere? Learn how to configure Google Scholar so you can get to the info you need quicker.
Other databases include full-text and may be more relevant for your topic.
Articles indexed in Google Scholar may be accessible through many of our databases,
but not all of them can work with the FindIt@VU service. For example,
the incredibly rich archive JSTOR
is excluded from Google Scholar, as are millions of articles only found by
searching comprehensive subject indexes.
Advanced search, but not always advanced
enough.
Although Google Scholar has advanced search features, it lacks certain
features that are specifically designed for searching in a given discipline.
Just a few examples: limiting by human subjects in PsycINFO,
class of organism in Biological
Abstracts, chemical properties in SciFinder
Scholar, by treatment in Medline,
or by marketing term in Business & Industry. These comprehensive, highly developed subject databases
are a much better choice when you need both reliable access and sophisticated
search techniques.
Spend less time looking for an article.
Google Scholar may offer 5 or more versions of the same article, depending
on which server provides access (the publisher, the author's website, another
indexing service, a secondary archive, etc.).
Rely on FindIt@VU to
lead you to full-text.
Trust the FindIt@VU Service, or do a search of ACORN,
if necessary, rather than paying for an article at a publisher's website.
You can usually get what you need through interlibrary
loan and document delivery providers. If you need help, ask
someone at
the Service Desk.
Consider other sources.
Relying exclusively on any single source is not recommended. Rigorous
research requires thorough searching across databases, varying your search
strategy to include synonyms and alternate spellings of keywords, utilizing
appropriate subject headings supplied by the database, and understanding
the breadth and depth of literature indexed by each database. Our
databases have been carefully selected to meet your needs.
Good for a start.
Google Scholar is certainly a good start. Recognize, however, that you are missing a lot. Rely
on the library's subscriptions as your best source. Databases and Research
Guides are all available. You will need your Owen ID/password or
your VUnet ID/password in order to login when off campus.
Configuring Google Scholar to work with Vanderbilt's FindIt@VU Service
Okay, so maybe you still want to use Google Scholar. That's fine. But if you set your preferences in Google Scholar, you'll be able to take better advantage of what Vanderbilt's libraries have to offer.
In Google Scholar, go to the Google Scholar Preferences page and select Vanderbilt University Library. This way, when you do a search, you can immediately click on the FindIt@VU link to see if the library has the resource in full-text.
You can also set Bibliography Manager settings. Do you use EndNote or RefWorks? You might want to set your preferences to your preferred bibliographic citation manager. Below is a screen capture of a search result from Google Scholar, with explanation.
1) Find an article you’re looking for.
Clicking
on a search result takes you to the abstract or the full text of the article
if it’s freely available online. If there’s more than one version of a paper
– including preprints, abstracts, conference papers or other adaptations
– you’ll see links to each version, grouped together.
2 & 3) Deepen your research by exploring
relevant articles.
You
can find papers that cite the article you’re interested in by following the
"Cited by" links or by exploring related papers via "Related Articles." Clicking
on the "Cited by" link will display a list of articles and documents that
have cited the document originally retrieved in the search. This makes it
possible to uncover other documents related by topic or subject to the original
document. However, Google Scholar only includes articles that are indexed
within its database, and this is a much smaller subset of scholarly articles
than found in some other Vanderbilt University databases. A database
that includes citation-based searching, and that may yield more comprehensive
results, is the ISI
Web of Knowledge.
4) Keep track of what you find – automatically. It’s easy to import citations into a bibliography manager – just visit the Preferences page and select your preferred citation format in the “Bibliography Manager” section. But were you aware that many of the library's databases allow you to export to citation managers, too? For more information on EndNote, the most commonly preferred bibliographic citation manager used here at Vanderbilt, visit Questions & Answers about Endnote.
5) Intrigued by the abstract? See if a library at Vanderbilt has the whole article. Once you indicate that you are affiliated with Vanderbilt, (it’s usually automatic if you’re on campus, but you can also set this in your Google Scholar Preferences for when off campus), you’ll see links to materials you can access in full-text. Keep in mind, however, that not all the materials in our databases will show up in Google Scholar. It never hurts to go straight to the library website and and see what's there, or contact a librarian for more information.
Google Book Search
What is Google Book Search? According to Google, users can "search the full-text of books to find ones that interest you and learn where to buy or borrow them." The libraries involved in this project are listed on Google's Library Partners page, but they include Harvard, Oxford, University of Michigan, University of California, the New York Public Library, and many others. It's a huge thing, and has gotten lots of notice from publishers, authors, libraries, and the media. Here is an overview of the issue, from Google's perspective.
More information about how Google Book Search works can be found here. But don't forget about ACORN, the Vanderbilt University Libraries' online catalog, which will probably be quicker if the item you want is still under copyright and you know that it's probably at Vanderbilt or can get it through interlibrary loan.
Google Search Tips
Basic
Google Search Tips 
-
Keep in mind that these not all these tips will work in every search engine
or database that you use. But the concepts of refining your search to get
better results are the same. Compliments of the Google Librarian Center.
Advanced Search - Did you even know that Google has an Advanced Search page? It's linked right there off to the right on Google's homepage. Besides the typical Boolean search strategies, it also provides you with ways to limit your search to language, format, domain, and when the page was last updated. You can also search by author, title, date, and even limit your search results to be within a particular subject area, such as "Business, Administration, Finance, and Economics."
Advanced Search Tips - This page offers numerous options for making your searches more precise and getting more useful results.
The University
of Connecticut Music & Dramatic Arts Library and the
Oberlin
College Science Library have wonderful pages on using Google Scholar,
both of which inspired the creation of this
page.