What is Google Scholar and How to Use it for Research?

Finding scholarly and peer-reviewed articles for academic research on search engines can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Enter Google Scholar, a beacon for researchers, academics, and scholars. Unlike traditional Google searches that return a mix of results from various sources, Google Scholar specializes in providing access to scholarly literature. If you’re using Google Scholar for research, this article offers some great tips that will help you optimize your usage of Google Scholar for research and get access to relevant and better results. 

What is Google Scholar? 

Google Scholar is a freely available academic search engine developed by Google. It indexes scholarly articles, books, and academic and conference papers by searching repositories of scholarly websites, universities, and publishers across various academic disciplines. For students and researchers, and those in academia, Google Scholar offers quick and easy access to a vast repository of academic content from multiple disciplines that can be useful when writing scholarly manuscripts and citations.  

How is Google Scholar different from a regular Google search? 

Regular Google search engines are ideal for finding information on general topics, news, and non-academic information as they scan the entire web for information. On the other hand, searches conducted using Google Scholar are more focused on specific subsets of academic and scientific data. However, when searching Google Scholar, students, and researchers need to verify available links and resources, as search results may not always be as reliable and authoritative as those presented by Scopus or Web of Science.  

10 Tips to Use Google Scholar for Research 

Students and researchers often use Google Scholar for research to access high-quality, credible sources for their work, facilitating a deeper understanding of their research topic. To harness the full potential of Google Scholar, consider these tips: 

1. Keywords are essential: While using Google Scholar for research, refrain from typing the entire topic of your research; instead, build and utilize a list of keywords. This will make your search more valuable and efficient.
2. Use of quotation marks: It is essential to specify the keywords in quotation marks for Google Scholar to provide you with the most relevant results. Quotation marks help establish the fact that you need results that are an exact match to your keywords. On the other hand, if quotation marks are not used, Google Scholar will deal with each keyword separately. This will lead to losing a considerable amount of time in searching for the most suitable articles.
3. Search by author’s name: If you want to search for articles and information written by a particular author related to your specific area of study, it is best to search by author name or click on the specific author’s name as it appears in any article produced through the search results.
4. Mention details if available: If you know the correct title of the article you are searching for, mention it in quotes in the search bar. This will throw up results with an exact match. Additionally, stating the year of publication of the articles or books you are searching for will get you better results.  
5. Researcher profiles: Google Scholar offers academics the option of creating their researcher profile, which can help them highlight their work, publications, and citations. This profile can be used as a digital CV and can help in networking and collaboration. 
6. Integration with universities: Some universities and libraries integrate Google Scholar into their search systems, providing seamless access to academic content through institutional accounts.  
7. Viewing full-text papers: Undertaking searches on Google Scholar will allow you to view the full text of a document by clicking on the link found on the right of the article title. These are usually presented in either PDF or HTML format. You can also view the full text by using Google Scholar through your institution’s web page in cases where it is accessible by the institution. 
8. Additional customization: By using available Google Scholar settings, you can further customize your search preferences to get articles in specific languages.  
   1. Advanced Search Options: Use the advanced search feature to narrow down results by author, publication, and date. This precision can help you quickly find specific documents. 
   2. Accessing Full-Text Papers: Look for links to PDFs or HTML formats on the right side of the search results page. If your institution has access, you might also find links to full text through your library’s subscriptions. 
9. Easy Citation: Google Scholar simplifies the citation process by providing citations in various formats (e.g., MLA, APA, Chicago) for each article, which can be easily copied and pasted into your work. The citation feature can be used to reference the article you want to use. However, it is always helpful to cross-check the references to see if all the information is included in it. 
10. Use of My Library:  In order to save the information and articles you choose from the search results and structure and organize them, it is always helpful to make use of the “my library” feature in Google Scholar. You can create a library where you will be able to save the needed documents. 

How does R Discovery optimize your research reading process?  

Keeping up with the latest research in your field and related areas is challenging. Every year, millions of papers are published, making it difficult to stay informed. Imagine how much simpler it would be if you could receive recommendations for research tailored to your interests. While Google Scholar is a powerful tool, R Discovery uses its tech capabilities around AI, ML, and NLP to solve the problem of recurring searches for research for researchers.  

For example, if you search for COVID-19 on Google Scholar and log out, you’ll have to ask Google Scholar (in every session) to show you content about COVID-19. This process becomes repetitive and consumes most of your time. Moreover, Google Scholar finds content that has been properly optimized for search. This means if a paper was not very famous or was not correctly tagged on the internet, you may never discover it. 

R Discovery’s targeted research reading with Literature Recommendations makes this process easier. R Discovery sifts through over 100 million scholarly articles across more than 9.5 million topics, quickly curates a list of research papers that match your interests, and offers personalized reading recommendations, saving you time. R Discovery saves your search queries and topics against your profile and will find relevant papers for you without any search every time you come to the app. 

With R Discovery, get access to the most extensive collection of open-access journals, including over 39 million open-access papers and more than 2 million preprints, all in one convenient location. If you’re new to R Discovery, now’s the perfect opportunity to get relevant research recommendations and simplify your research discovery. Click to install the free R Discovery app now!

R Discovery is a literature search and research reading platform that accelerates your research discovery journey by keeping you updated on the latest, most relevant scholarly content. With 250M+ research articles sourced from trusted aggregators like CrossRef, Unpaywall, PubMed, PubMed Central, Open Alex and top publishing houses like Springer Nature, JAMA, IOP, Taylor & Francis, NEJM, BMJ, Karger, SAGE, Emerald Publishing and more, R Discovery puts a world of research at your fingertips. 

Try R Discovery Prime FREE for 1 week or upgrade at just US$72 a year to access premium features that let you listen to research on the go, read in your language, collaborate with peers, auto sync with reference managers, and much more. Choose a simpler, smarter way to find and read research – Download the app and start your free 7-day trial today!