Google Scholar: What Is It and How Do You Use It?

What is Google Scholar?

By entering the same words you would use in the standard Google search engine, you can find academic research that would otherwise appear much further down the results because of weaker search rankings.

Google Scholar contains abstracts of academic publications and, where available, their full versions, as well as research reports, conference papers, academic dissertations and patents.

It is a vast database that even beginners should be able to navigate. Enter the keywords or phrases you are interested in into the search bar. However, remember that it is best to use individual, fairly specific phrases. Vague queries will produce many results that may not be useful to you.

Navigating the search engine is very intuitive, and the left-hand sidebar provides several filters to make your work easier. First, you can choose the date range that interests you, as entering broad keywords may bring up publications dating back as far as the late nineteenth century.

You can then sort the results by relevance, meaning how closely they match the words you are searching for. Another option is to search in any language or only in a selected language, such as English or French. The final option, which is often overlooked, is to search for patents and citations. It is usually best to deselect these if you are looking for specific academic research.

Google Scholar is particularly useful for people who are not familiar with specialist English keywords, as it is also very effective at finding publications in other languages. Its collection is extensive, so you are highly likely to find research that interests you. The search engine also allows you to create alerts, helping you stay up to date with topics that matter to you.

Additional options

Google Scholar also offers several useful features beyond searching for publications. Beneath each publication, you will find a star icon and a citation icon, the number of citations, related articles and all versions. If a PDF version of a publication is available, the word “PDF” appears to the right of the article; clicking it starts the download.

The first icon, the star, allows you to add articles to your library in your Google account. “My library” is located on the right, just below your Google account icon. In the library, you will find all the articles you have starred. You can edit the documents’ bibliographic details or export them in BibTeX, EndNote, RefMan and CSV formats.

The next icon is the quotation mark, labelled “Cite”. It allows you to generate a citation for the document in MLA, APA or ISO 690 style for BibTeX, EndNote, RefMan and RefWorks. Next is the “Cited by” function, which shows you who has cited the article you are interested in. “Related articles” is a very similar option.

The “Cited by” and “Related articles” functions help you find similar articles without having to continue browsing Scholar; you can find the remaining relevant information there. The final option, “All versions”, displays every available version of a particular article.

Advanced searching in Google Scholar

More advanced users can take advantage of additional Google Scholar search options that narrow down the results. However, few people realise that Scholar has an advanced search function. In the top-left corner, there is an icon with three horizontal lines: the Menu. Click it to find the “Advanced search” option, which allows you to refine your results. Here, you can specify whether a keyword should appear in the text or only in the title, and you can also find works by a particular author.

The first field, “Find articles with all the words”, allows you to use the AND operator. This means it will search for both entered words appearing together in the text or title. Both words must be present for a result to appear. The next field is “Find articles with the exact phrase”, which allows you to search for several words as a phrase. The third field, “Find articles with at least one of the words”, uses the OR operator, meaning it will show results containing at least one of the words you entered. The fourth field, “Find articles without the words”, uses the NOT operator to exclude an unwanted keyword.

Below the search fields, you can choose whether your keywords should appear in the title or in the body of the text. The fifth field allows you to search for works by a particular author, the sixth lets you enter the name of a specific publisher, and the final field allows you to search for publications from particular years.

Is Google Scholar enough to find interesting publications?

Scholar is mainly suitable for beginners and students, but it works best when you are looking for very specific information. The main issue is that the articles displayed are highly selective, so finding what you need can often take some time. In other search engines, such as ScienceDirect, you can narrow the results by the type of publication you are looking for. This is particularly helpful when researching several different aspects of a topic.

Imagine that you are writing an article about the role of vitamin D in the immune system. The article needs to be detailed, so you first want to explain what vitamin D is, where it comes from and how skin synthesis works. Only then will you describe its effect on the immune system.

When using more advanced search engines, you can enter the keyword “vitamin D” and narrow the results down to encyclopaedias. These will provide basic information and a description of skin synthesis. To explain the role of vitamin D in immune responses, you will need research and review articles.

Finally, you can search for meta-analyses concerning specific infectious diseases and vitamin D concentrations in the blood. This is not possible in Google Scholar. If you enter the keywords “vitamin D” and “infectious diseases”, you will see a whole range of different publications, from which you may identify only a few that are useful.

Let us return to the example of vitamin D. If you enter only “vitamin D” into the search engine, you will probably see several general publications about vitamin D. However, further down the results, you will find related topics such as vitamin D and diabetes, vitamin D and cardiovascular disease, and so on. This will help you understand the subject and appreciate how wide-ranging the functions of vitamin D may be.

If you are a beginner, this guide should help you search Google Scholar. Do not be afraid to use the advanced options, as they can make your work much easier. Other useful medical databases include ResearchGate, ScienceDirect and PubMed.