6 Smart Ways To Use Google Scholar For Research

So you are a Student, a Teacher, Librarian or a Researcher and you've heard all the talks about Google Scholar but do not know much about it or how to maximize its use for your research work- do not worry as you have come to the right place. Here we are going to let you know what Google Scholar is all about and how you can efficiently use it for your research purposes.

What is Google Scholar?

Google Scholar is a Web search engine that specifically searches scholarly literature and academic resources. Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature across a variety of disciplines and sources such as articles, theses, books, abstracts, technical reports, online repositories, academic publishers, universities and so on. On Google Scholar, you would find most of its scholarly materials in full texts and some others as abstracts with links for payment services.

Just as with Google's standard Web Search, Google Scholar ranks and lists results according to how relevant they are to the search query. The most relevant references should theoretically appear at the top of the page. As you may have already known, Google Scholar is a product of Google which is also a Web search engine, however the difference between them is that Google searches public web content while Google Scholar searches for scholarly contents that you would find in a Library's catalog or databases.

As with Google or any other web search engine, in order for you to make the most out of Google Scholar when doing research, you must be able to know how to search effectively. How do you do this? These 6 smart ways below tell you just what to do:

1. Refine your keywords

*Go to Google Scholar- https://scholar.google.com

*Click on the arrow to the right of the search box

*Choose with words or phrases you want to include or exclude

2. Search for words by specific authors

*Go to Google Scholar- https://scholar.google.com

*Click on the arrow to the right of the search box

*Type in the name of the author in the box next to ''Return articles authored by''

3. Check for articles in a specific publication

*Go to Google Scholar- https://scholar.google.com

*Click on the arrow to the right of the search box

*Type in the name of the publication in the box next to "Return articles published in"

4. Search for articles published within a specific timeframe

*Go to Google Scholar- https://scholar.google.com

*Click on the arrow to the right of the search box

*Specify a time frame by providing numerical values in the box next to "Return articles dated between"

5. Create Google Scholar Alerts

*Go to Google Scholar- https://scholar.google.com

*Click on the envelope icon ''Alerts'' on top of the search box

*You can also create alerts from Google Scholar search results page by clicking on the link "Create alert" on the right hand side of the page, with an 'envelop' icon beside it.

6. Locate the full text of an article

*Go to Google Scholar- https://scholar.google.com

*Type a keyword in the search box (subject-based)

*On the search results page, click on the library link on the right hand side labeled "Pdf"

*You can also click on the link "All versions" to view alternative articles

*You can also click on the link "Related" or "Cited by" to view similar articles