About Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible search engine provided by Google, specifically designed for scholarly literature. It's a valuable tool for researchers, students, and academics, offering a vast body of content across a variety of disciplines, including:
- Scholarly journal articles
- Books and book chapters
- Theses and dissertations
- Conference papers
- Patents
- Court opinions
What to Use Google Scholar For
Searching
- Google Scholar searches beyond any single database or institution's subscriptions.
- It contains a mix of both freely available and paywalled content.
- Be sure to link Clark to Google Scholar to highlight items we have direct access to.
Citation Tracking & Searching
- Users can track citations, making it easier to identify influential works in a particular field.
- Users can also search for articles that cite other articles, and search within those citing articles.
Google Scholar Concerns
Just like with any other tool, there are advantages and drawbacks with Google Scholar. Some of the limitations of Google Scholar are:
Quality control
- Google Scholar doesn't filter out uncredible sources, so retracted or discredited articles, outdated information, and content from predatory journals may appear in your search results
Generated citations
- Always double-check any citations generated from Google Scholar for accuracy and proper formatting
Options for advanced searching and filtering
- Fewer options for advanced searching than other library research tools
- Fewer options to filter content by date, type, or publisher
- No options to filter by subject, language, or availability
