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Research Cycle: Google Scholar

A step by step guide to the research process

Google Scholar Coverage

Google Can Bring You Back 100,000 Answers. A Librarian Can Bring You Back the Right One

"Google Scholar includes journal and conference papers, theses and dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research. You'll find works from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies and university repositories, as well as scholarly articles available anywhere across the web. Google Scholar also includes court opinions and patents." - Google Scholar website https://scholar.google.com.au/

Why use Google Scholar?

Google Scholar is a useful resource in the following scenarios...
  • Search for information from not only peer-reviewed journal articles but other "grey literature" formats such as theses, conference papers, government reports etc.
  • Assist in helping to identify authors who are experts on the topic you are searching on.
  • Searches across multiple subject specialties, expanding into social sciences and multidisciplinary areas
But remember...
  • Effective research means searching a number of resources (databases & search engines) to back up your evidence.
  • Google Scholar will not always find everything you need, it may miss some "gold standard" articles
  • A bibliographic database such as Medline or CINAHL can provide more proximate searching, particularly if you are looking at certain study designs.
  • Google Scholar can provide irrelevant results which may be more time-consuming in your research efforts.
  • Records can only be exported one at a time, unlike a database which can export multiple citations.
And always....

Basic Searching tips

Basic Search Tips

This link

 https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html#searching provides further information on doing basic searching.

Specifically look at the examples for searching via a title, an author and how to customise your results by date range.

 
Boolean operators in Google Scholar

The boolean operators of AND OR & NOT are able to be used when searching Google Scholar.

Read more about the use of boolean operators here - Combining your search strategy - boolean operators

E.g. juvenile arthritis AND methotrexate

 
Searching by study design

Searching for a specific study design in Google Scholar can result in additional references that are not relevant.

The use of the search filed intitle: will focus results to only include finding the name of the study design in the title field.

E.g. juvenile arthritis AND methotrexate AND intitle:systematic reviews

This search formula may not always be precise as the name of the study design may be indexed in the abstract, but in most cases a study design such as a systematic review will be indexed in the title or sub-title.  When using the field index intitle it will retrieve the most relevant results.

 

Adding records to My Library

This link https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html#library provides further information on how to set up a "library" and retain your selected articles 

To add records, you will be required to sign into your Google personal account, Google will prompt you to sign in, when you select the Save option.

Under each record from your resulting search click on the Save link.  A popup box titled Saved to my library will appear.

 

 

 

 

 

The Reading List is a default list, to create a library specific to your search topic, click on +Create New and label a new topic name.

After you have done this, your new library name will appear as an option to add further records.

Note : Records can only be exported one at a time, unlike a database which can export multiple citations.

Linking Cabrini Journals via Google Scholar

Step 1

Link to Google scholar https://scholar.google.com.au/

Log in with your personal Google Account, this is the account you will use for other Google software such as GMAIL. 

Step 2

In the top left hand corner, click on the menu bar symbol.

Select the Settings Link and select Library Links

Step 3

Type in the word Cabrini and search, the result of Cabrini Health will display, please check box to select.

Up to 5 libraries can be selected.

If you have affiliation with other universities, search and add these libraries for more options of accessing full text.

Step 4

Search for results in Google Scholar, if Cabrini has a link to that title, you will see the words CLICK ON FULL TEXT  on the right side of the displayed citation.

When this link is selected, the record will be displayed in the library search with various links to fulltext access.

Remote Access to Google Scholar Full text links

OpenAthens registration is required to access Cabrini full text from Google Scholar if offsite.