{"id":2764,"date":"2015-06-26T12:04:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T06:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/?p=2764"},"modified":"2018-05-24T15:13:02","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T09:43:02","slug":"effective-use-of-google-scholar-for-your-academic-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/effective-use-of-google-scholar-for-your-academic-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Effective Use of Google Scholar for Your Academic Research"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>It Started with So Much Promise<\/h2>\n<p>When <a title=\"Google Scholar\" href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google Scholar<\/a> (GS) first launched in November 2004, the academic search engine seemed to offer so much promise \u2014\u00a0the ability to search academic databases with the same ease of use of the original \u2018Mother Google\u2019 search engine.<\/p>\n<p>Research students fell in love with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/conceptual-vs-empirical-research-better\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">conceptual theory<\/a>, but the reality was, as many librarians were forced to point out on multiple occasions, not quite there yet.<\/p>\n<p>The amount of academic research that was accessible during GS\u2019s early days was limited to say the least. Of course, that has improved in the last decade, but the question remains as to the extent to which GS can be counted on to deliver a rigorous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/editing-services.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">systematic review<\/a> of available academic literature on a chosen topic.<\/p>\n<h2>But There&#8217;re User Complaints and Frustrations<\/h2>\n<p>Much of the frustrations about using Google Scholar can be classified according to the research expertise of the user:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 30px;text-align: left\">Students respond well to the familiar feel of using Google Scholar, but express frustration at the clear dominance of natural sciences over social sciences and the humanities.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 30px;text-align: left\">Students looking for full-text versions of articles are often presented with similar versions of the article from multiple sources (the author, the publisher, and however many databases give GS access to their index and archives). This makes it difficult to identify official versions as opposed to pre-print or corrected versions.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 30px;text-align: left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/librarian-help\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Academic Librarians seeking to assist researchers<\/a> in creating literature reviews are frustrated with the current inability to filter-out predatory journal content and open access material. Whether or not the material is peer-reviewed is not always made clear, and there is no way to filter the search by peer-reviewed journal.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-left: 30px;text-align: left\">Research Scientists continue to be frustrated with the limitations of GS\u2019s preference for post-hoc searches. In other words, rather than producing a robust systematic review of available literature on a topic, Google Scholar performs best when you know what you\u2019re looking for in advance. This can be helpful in tracking down a specific article (especially a free version), but it\u2019s not much use if you\u2019re just beginning to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/how-to-write-good-literature-review\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">compile your literature review<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Forget the Pros &amp; Cons \u2014 Just Understand What You\u2019re Working with<\/h2>\n<p>The advice I give to my students is to proceed with caution. The ease of use of Google Scholar is definitely attractive, but since Google has made no firm commitment to filtering out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/avoid-paying-predatory-publishers-journals-for-publication\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">predatory journals<\/a> and other pseudo-science sources, much of the material that will appear in your search may well be of poor academic quality. That being said, however, Google Scholar can still be a valuable resource when you are just beginning your search.<\/p>\n<p>Just as <a title=\"Citing Wikipedia: Is it an Acceptable Source in Academia?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wikipedia-is-it-an-acceptable-source-for-an-academic-paper\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wikipedia<\/a> is treated dismissively for the lack of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/fake-peer-review-leads-to-massive-retractions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">peer-review process<\/a>, it is still a great place to start your research. You may not be able to take all the material as gospel, but you can at least find some good references to author peer-reviewed material \u2014\u00a0just don\u2019t list Wikipedia as a peer-reviewed source in your bibliography.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div style=\"display:flex; gap:10px;justify-content:\" class=\"wps-pgfw-pdf-generate-icon__wrapper-frontend\">\n\t\t<a  href=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764?action=genpdf&amp;id=2764\" class=\"pgfw-single-pdf-download-button\" ><img data-src=\"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-generator-for-wp\/admin\/src\/images\/PDF_Tray.svg\" title=\"Generate PDF\" style=\"width:auto; height:45px;\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It Started with So Much Promise When Google Scholar (GS) first launched in November 2004,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1319,1462],"tags":[1517],"ppma_author":[1895],"class_list":["post-2764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beyond-publishing","category-product-service-reviews","tag-search-engine-for-researchers"],"better_featured_image":null,"acf":{"faq_main_heading":"","faq_heading_one":"","faq_heading_two":"","faq_heading_three":"","faq_heading_four":"","faq_heading_five":"","faq_heading_six":"","faq_description_one":"","faq_description_two":"","faq_description_three":"","faq_description_four":"","faq_description_five":"","faq_description_six":""},"views":1110,"single_webinar_page_date":null,"single_webinar_page_time":null,"session_agenda":null,"who_should_attend_this_session":null,"about_the_speaker_field":null,"co-webinar-sec":null,"co_webinar_sec_one":null,"speaker-name":null,"webinar-date":null,"webinar-time":null,"webinar-s-image":null,"custum_webinar_category":null,"authors":[{"term_id":1895,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"editor","display_name":"Enago Academy","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2ef4bc47f3ceaa56f5eb3b26f9520fad298ba36ede4f86315997ffb45db37a1f?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Academy","first_name":"Editor","job_title":"","description":"Enago Academy, the knowledge arm of Enago, offers comprehensive and up-to-date resources on academic research and scholarly publishing to all levels of scholarly professionals: students, researchers, editors, publishers, and academic societies. It is also a popular platform for networking, allowing researchers to learn, share, and discuss their experiences within their network and community. The team, which comprises subject matter experts, academicians, trainers, and technical project managers, are passionate about helping researchers at all levels establish a successful career, both within and outside academia."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}