1. GOOGLING
ACADEMIC
RESEARCH
C H R IS W O O D L E Y
PROGRAM LIAISON, LRC
CWOODLEY@CONESTOGAC.ON.CA
X2330
FIND THIS PRESENTATION AT:
T I N Y U R L . C O M / C WG S C H O L A R
2. GOOGLING TIPS & TRICKS
FOR ANY PURPOSE
Try using Google’s Advanced Search features:
• Quotation marks keep two or more words together as a phrase (e.g.
“face mask”) or stop Google from searching for related words (e.g.
“yogurt” searches only for that word. Without the quotes, it retrieves
sites with the word dairy, too.)
• A minus sign (-) removes webpages with a specified search term (e.g. –
frozen gets rid of websites about Frozen Yogurt)
• Writing site: and then writing a website, or a type of site, limits the
search to just that website or type of site (e.g. .org for organizations,
.gc.ca for Canadian government sites, .on.ca for Ontario government
sites, etc).
• Using intext: intitle: and inanchor: to search for a word in just those
areas (or to exclude them using - ). E.g. intitle:yogurt;
• NOTE: never add a space between the colon and your search terms. E.g.
intitle:yogurt not intitle: yogurt
3. WHAT IS GOOGLE
SCHOLAR?
A search interface for locating citations to academic
research—and accessing the full-text online (sometimes).
Really, this is the definition of any research database.
Google Scholar is just one more in a host of research tools
similar to those offered by the library (but using it is free to
all).
Reading articles found in it is not free (not always, anyway).
4. WHAT CAN YOU SEARCH
USING GOOGLE SCHOLAR?
“…articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from
academic publishers, professional societies, online
repositories, universities and other web sites.”
• Some resources are “open access,” i.e. free
• Many have a cost-per-article
• The LRC can help improve access to the costly articles
(but more on that later)
Google. (2011). About Google Scholar. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.ca/intl/en/scholar/about.html
5. WHAT CAN’T YOU FIND
USING GOOGLE SCHOLAR?
• Google doesn’t search everything, and neither does
Google Scholar
• Only searches “scholarly” sources
• So it does not search the following resources:
• Newspapers
• Trade Magazines
• Professional Magazines
• General Interest Magazines
6. GOOGLE ≠ EVIL
Google Scholar:
• Attempts to filter the internet to just scholarly publications
• Searches across many disciplines
• Good for multidisciplinary topics
• Easy to use and familiar!
• Connects to full-text where available (for free, or through a
library to which you have access)
11. GOOGLE ≠ GOOD
• What exactly is included? We don’t know and Google won’t say.
• Calls into question content providers, i.e. how does Google define
“scholarly”?
• Good for “casual” research, but not generally acceptable as a single
source for coverage of the literature on a topic.
• Coverage is unknown (gaps exist)
• Relevancy Ranking of search results is questionable
• Narrowing/sorting search results is very basic in functionality
• No controlled vocabulary (e.g. is it ‘Green Business’ or ‘Sustainable
Business’?)
• Citations may be inaccurate due to reliance of web crawling extraction
(e.g. Author Name: P Login)
• Students are often unaware that GS’s preferences must be manually set
to link to libraries’ resources
Jacsó, P. Google Scholar's ghost authors. Library Journal 134: 26-27.
12. DOES GOOGLE SEARCH ALL
SCHOLARLY CONTENT?
Google Scholar is not comprehensive for all topics
• 2005: GS retrieved an avg. of 60% of the total content of 47
databases across a variety of subject areas. 95% coverage
of Open-Access journals.
• 2008: GS retrieves approx. 70% of open access articles
• 2010: dramatic increase to 98 – 100% coverage of 8
databases
Chen, X. (2010). Google Scholar's dramatic coverage improvement five years after debut. Serials Review 36: 221 - 226.
doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2010.08.002
Norris, M., Oppenheim, C., & Rowland, F. (2008). Finding open access articles using google, google scholar, OAIster and
OpenDOAR. Online Information Review, 32(6), 709-709-715. doi:10.1108/14684520810923881
13. DOES GOOGLE SEARCH ALL
SCHOLARLY CONTENT?
FOCUS ON MEDICAL LITERATURE:
• Google Scholar is complimentary to other health research
databases – not a replacement
• 2007 study:
• GS usually finds more citations than PubMed
• 50% of the GS citations are not found in PubMed (mostly
citations to non-journal resources, e.g. books, scholarly
websites; also due to “false hits”)
• 30% of PubMed citations were not found in GS.
• GS does not contain many advanced search features
(controlled vocabulary, few filters, few sorting options)
Shultz, M. (2007). Comparing test searches in PubMed and Google Scholar. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 95(4), 442-
445. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=27358731&site=ehost-live.
14. LINKING TO LRC
RESOURCES
• Go to Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.ca)
• Click “Settings” in upper right hand of the search page.
• On the Settings page, click “Library Links” on the left.
• Enter “Conestoga” in the search box and click “Find
Library”.
• Checkboxes appear below the search box.
• Checkmark the Conestoga links.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Save
Preferences.”
• Your searches will now show links to Conestoga LRC
resources that contain articles from your search results.
