This document provides an overview of Google Scholar, including what it is, how it works, its pros and cons, and how to use it. Some key points:
- Google Scholar is a free web search engine for scholarly literature like peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, and articles. It indexes content from publishers, universities, and other websites.
- It has limitations in what is included from certain publishers, material only in print, and content in the "Deep Web." Advanced searching options are also limited.
- Features include searching full texts, citation tracking, setting up alerts, and metrics on author publications and citations. It provides some access to scholarly works not available on other databases.