Google Scholar: Searching Google Scholar

Google Scholar searches like traditional Google but the difference is in the results. Google Scholar includes sources like articles, theses, books, abstracts, conference proceedings, patents, court opinions and many more. 

To conduct a basic search in Google Scholar, enter your keywords in the search box and click search. To search by author or publication title, click on the dropdown arrow on the right side of the search box. This will also allow you to limit the results to articles published between a range of years. Additionally, the Advanced Search will allow you to search articles in a particular subject area.

Be Advised ...

• Google Scholar does not allow you to limit your search results like the electronic resources available through the CORE Library (such as by peer-reviewed or full text).  There is no easy way, unfortunately, to filter by peer-reviewed.
• To assist with narrowing your search, you can put quotation marks around a phrase of words. Adding quotation marks to your search tells Google Scholar to search as a phrase instead of individual words. A search for Great Wall of China yields 520,000 results while a search for "Great Wall of China" yields 9,740 results.

A basic search in Google Scholar will yield results as follows:

If a result has CORE Full Text in the right margin, that means the article can be accessed via the CORE library.  Simply click on the CORE Full Text link to be taken to our library.

You may see a screen like the one below.  Click on Find this article in full text from EBSCOhost Smartlinks to be taken to the article's record, where you can access its HTML or PDF version.

Initial search queries often turn up overwhelming or unrelated results.  The trick is know how to manipulate the features of Google Scholar.  Let's look at a few that can be helpful.

When you find an article that is particularly appliable to your research, you can see whether others have later cited that article.  Look for the Cited by [number] below the article record.  If you click on that link, it will show you the other books or articles within Google Scholar that cited the first article.  You can even "search within these results" amongst that number for keywords if there is some particular aspect of the topic that you are researching.

Explore by clicking on Related Articles, which can show you closely related work ... or search for the author's name to see what else s/he has written.

Advanced search features can be found by typing in a search term and clicking on the arrow that appears to the right in the search box.