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Using Google Scholar effectively

Used effectively and with caution, Google Scholar can be a valuable part of your research toolkit. To do this, you must understand its strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths

• Arguably, the best feature of Google Scholar is its familiar interface. If you have used Google, you can use Google Scholar. A simple keyword search may retrieve results across a wide range of materials including journal articles, books, and grey literature such as reports and conference proceedings.
• Especially useful for Nova Scotia Health researchers is the Library links feature, which allows you to see if Library Services provides access to the full text of a resource (1). If you access Google Scholar through Library Services' Databases A-Z page, you will automatically be linked to our library. You can also manually set up links to as many as five libraries, by clicking on the 3-bar menu in the top left corner (2), choosing Settings--Library links and searching for your libraries of choice. You can find detailed instructions on how to set up library links in this tip sheet.
• If you are logged in to a Google account, you can save citations to your Google library (3) by clicking on the star icon (4) that appears under the article information. You can export citations to a citation manager, either from your Google library, or individually by clicking on the quotation marks icon (5). If you choose your preferred citation manager by going to Settings--Search results--Bibliography manager, an import link (6) will appear at the bottom right of the article information.
• Google Scholar's Cited by (7) feature provides a list of resources that reference the original article. Exploring this list, in addition to the Related articles (8) link, may reveal resources relevant to your search topic. Keep in mind that this is not a comprehensive list of citing articles, as it only includes resources that are indexed in Google Scholar.
• You can sign up for email alerts for a particular search by clicking on Create alert (9) at the bottom of the left sidebar. Google Scholar will email you newly published results that match your search criteria.

Weaknesses

It is important to understand that, although Google Scholar provides access to articles indexed in scholarly databases, it is not, itself, a database. It is a search engine with a number of limitations.

• Google Scholar allows you to view only the first 1000 search results, sorted by relevance, and it does not disclose the algorithm used to determine relevance. Both of these limitations can be problematic, particularly for researchers engaged in a comprehensive systematic review (Haddaway, Collins, Coughlin & Kirk, 2015)
• It is difficult to search with precision in Google Scholar. Filters are limited to publication date and whether to include patents and citations, and results can only be sorted by date or relevance. Google Scholar's advanced search (accessible from the 3-bar menu at the top left corner of the page) is far less robust than that of most academic databases. You can search by author or publication date, but can't limit your search to specific fields, such as article title or abstract. You can use the advanced search options to mimic basic Boolean searching (AND/OR/NOT) or can use some of these tips for refining Google searches.
• Perhaps most concerning is Google Scholar's failure to clearly identify how it defines scholarly resources. This, coupled with the fact that you cannot limit results to peer-reviewed or scholarly publications, means that search results may include articles from predatory journals. Researchers "should exercise caution when an article is only found in Google Scholar and not through a search of bibliographic databases" (Ross-White, Godfrey, Sears & Wilson, 2019). Always evaluate resources found on Google Scholar for credibility!

If you have any questions about using Google Scholar effectively, or would like information about searching our scholarly databases, reach out to us at AskLibrary@nshealth.ca or book a consultation with a Library Services team member.

References

Haddaway, N.R., Collins, A.M., Coughlin, D., & Kirk, S. (2015). The role of Google Scholar in evidence reviews and its applicability to grey literature searching. PloS One, 10(9), e0138237. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138237

Ross-White, A., Godfrey, C.M., Sears, K.A., & Wilson, R. (2019). Predatory publications in evidence syntheses. Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA, 107(1), 57-61. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2019.491

Roxanne MacMillan

Librarian Educator
Dickson Building, Central Zone