Google Scholar (GS) is an entirely complimentary research engine that could be described as the academic equivalent of Google. Instead of searching all the information that is indexed on the web, it searches for repositories of:
- Publishers
- Universities
- Research websites
It’s generally an insignificant portion of the total number of Google users to search. The whole process is automated; however, the majority of the results of a search are from trustworthy research sources.
Yet, Google is typically less conscientious about what is included in its search results compared to more carefully curated subscription-based academic databases, such as Scopus and Web of Science. Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate the reliability of websites linked by Google Scholar.
What makes Google Scholar better than Google to find research papers?
One benefit of using Google Scholar is that the interface is comfortable and familiar to everyone who uses Google. This helps reduce the time needed to learn about getting information from scholarly sources.
There are many beneficial differences to a standard Google search. Google Scholar allows you to:
- A formatted citation copy in different styles like MLA and APA
- export bibliographic information (BibTeX, RIS) to be used with reference management software.
- Explore other works that have cited the mentioned work
- You can quickly locate the full-text versions of the article.
While searching for free in Google Scholar is entirely possible, most content isn’t freely accessible. Google strives to locate restricted content from public repositories. If you’re an academic, researcher, or institute, you can create a library connection that permits you to view the items available at your institution.
This is the Google Scholar search results page.
Google Scholar results page The Google Scholar results page differs from the Google results page in several important ways. However, the result page for search results is distinct, and it is important to know the various pieces of information that are presented. Let’s take a look at what results are displayed for the phrase “machine learning.”
- The first line in each result gives the name of the item (e.g., a chapter, book, article, or report).
- The second line contains bibliographic details about the document in chronological order, including the author(s) of the document, publication, or Journal in which it appears, the year of publication, and the publisher.
Clicking on the title link will take you to the publisher’s page, where you can find more information about the document. The abstract and download options for the PDF are also available.
On the left side of the entry are the more direct methods to obtain the complete text. In this case, Google has also located an open PDF version of the article hosted by umich.edu. It is not certain that this is the exact version that was eventually published in the Journal.
Tips to search Google Scholar
While Google Scholar limits each search to a maximum of 1000 results, there are too many to cover everything, and you require an efficient method of finding relevant articles. Here’s a list of professional strategies to help you save time and browse more efficiently.
- Google Scholar searches are not affected by the case.
When working with Google Scholar, you do not have to worry about case-sensitive issues. Also, searching for “Machine Learning” will produce similar results to the search for “machine learning.”
- Utilize keywords instead of complete sentences.
Your research topic is self-driving vehicles. In a typical Google search, you could type something like “What is the current state of the technology used for self-driving cars?” However, Google Scholar will provide less-than-optimal results for that question.
You need to create a list of keywords and search for them using autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, or driverless cars. Google Scholar can assist with this: If you type in the search field, you’ll find similar searches suggested by Scholar!
- Make use of quotes when you find an exact match.
If you place the search term in quotation marks, you can look for exact matches to the word in both the headline and the text body of the documents. If you do not use quotation marks, Google Scholar examines each term individually.
So, if you search the national park system, the words you search for are only sometimes found together. Specific phrases and words in groups should be enclosed with quotation marks.
You can add the year into the search term to find articles that were that were published in a specific year.
For instance, a search for “self-driving cars 2015” will bring up books or articles published in 2015.
Utilizing the options on the left-hand panel, you can further limit the results of your search by limiting the number of years covered by the search or the addition or exclusion of Patents. Additionally, you can sort the results based on relevancy or date.
Utilize the Boolean operator to control your search results.
Searches do not have to be case-sensitive. However, there are plenty of Boolean operators that you can employ to manage the search. However, they must be capitalized.
- It requires both words or phrases to be included in the document.
- NOT can be put on top of words or phrases to exclude results containing them.
- Or assign the same weight to results that match only one word or phrase on either side.
