Making the most of
Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) is a version of Google which only
searches scholarly information. Google don’t say specifically how they select
which material is scholarly, but they do search pre-prints, institutional
repositories, universities, academic journals, professional societies, and
books.
Google Scholar uses algorithms to choose which results to display and how to
rank them. Google Scholar is good at finding material in the science and
technology fields, and less so for the humanities. It is also very good at
locating official reports and other grey literature, which are often hard to track
down using other methods.
Settings
Click on the gear symbol in the top of the screen. This will take you to the
Scholar settings page.
You can change a number of settings here, including language and how many
results are shown. The two below are very useful (If you have a Google
account, you will be able to save these settings so you will always see them
when you are logged in to Google).
1
Bibliography Manager
If you are using bibliographic management software (e.g. EndNote, Reference
Manager, RefWorks), you can export results from Google Scholar in a
recognised format, which will help you keep track of your results.
Library Links
Click Library Links in the left-hand menu. If you are accessing Google
Scholar on campus, or logged in to the VPN, Imperial College may already be
selected as your library link:
If you don’t see the above, then search for Imperial College London, and click
the check box next to the Imperial College London – Find at Imperial
2
option. This allows you to check whether the Library has online access to the
results you find.
Click Save to save your settings.
Searching
 Google Scholar has two searches – normal and advanced.
 Try the normal search first – type your search terms into the
search box and click
 Your results will be displayed with a variety of options for each
result:
Refine your results – you can refine your results by choosing whether
to exclude patents, restricting the results to items published since a
certain year, or a range of dates, and whether you want to include
citations.
Cited by – the articles that Google Scholar can find which have cited
the article. You can also search within articles citing the paper that you
select.
Related Articles – searches for articles which are on a similar theme.
This can be useful if you find an article which looks very relevant to
your search.
3
All … versions – Google Scholar groups articles it thinks are the
same together. This may mean that it has found results for a
conference paper, a preprint or articles in a peer-reviewed journal and
linked them together.
Web of Science – the number of citations which can be found in Web
of Science. This number will often be different to Google Scholar’s, as
the two services have different indexes.
Import into RefWorks – allows you to add the citation of the article to
RefWorks or other bibliographic software. (This can be changed – see
Settings). If you have not set your preferences this will show as Cite.
Save – allows you to save the reference to your Google Scholar
Library (see Saving results).
Find at Imperial – opens a window so you can check Imperial’s online
holdings. This does not search the library catalogue (see Settings).
[PDF] or [DOC] – means that Google Scholar has found a copy of the
paper online. This will usually be an open access version, for example
in a repository.
Types of result
Google Scholar will often find information from sources where it can’t find
information to link to on the web. It will mark these results as a book or
citation, and will provide as much information as it can about them. You will
need to use Library Search to see if the item is available in any Imperial
College Library.
4
Advanced Search
In common with most databases, Google Scholar has advanced search
features. Access them by clicking the down arrow in the search box. You can
use them to narrow or expand your search, which should improve your results.
You can use these to exclude search words, search by phrase or
search for one of several words – the options are similar to Boolean
searching.
You can restrict your search to author, publication or date. For
example, if you require an article in Nature from last year, you could
restrict the search accordingly.
5
Saving results
You have the option to save your results in Google Scholar, using the My
Library feature. You need a Google account to use this service. To set up
your Library, click on the link in the left hand menu and select
. You can
then save articles using the blue Save link under each. Each article needs to
be added individually.
You can access your Library at any time by clicking the link. You can search it
in the same way as you search Google Scholar. Clicking on the title of an
article in your Library will take you to a full page record. Here you can see the
full reference. You also have the option to add labels, which act like folders or
tags, export the reference to referencing software, and delete it from your
Library. These will appear in the left hand menu when you use your Library.
6
Alerting
Google Scholar has an alert option. This will email you whenever new results
are found for your research. At present, this option is only available as an
email – there is no option to get information via an RSS feed.
To set up an alert, click on the
link on the search results screen,
located in the left hand pane, or at the bottom of the screen. You can then set
up an alert, as below. You do not have to have a Google account to use the
service.
7
Things to remember
 Double-check to see if we have access. Although Google Scholar has
access to our journals information, occasionally it may provide incorrect
information. It’s always worth checking Library Search – this will allow
you to see if we have a journal in print (which Google Scholar can’t
check for). If we don’t have access in print or online, then you can try our
Document Delivery service – we can get articles from other universities
for you.
 Check your settings. If you don’t have an account with Google Scholar,
they may be reset for each session.
 Google Scholar doesn’t always have access to the same resources that
you do as a member of Imperial College. Citation searching, in
particular, may be less effective using Google Scholar, as it only has
access to a relatively small number of articles. You may find a database
that is more useful for this – for example, Web of Science.
 Don’t forget that you still need to evaluate the source of your information.
Although Google Scholar has indexed the article, it may not have been
peer-reviewed or come from a reputable source.
 Google Scholar is best at finding online information. It may not be able to
find older journal articles or books, as this information is less readily
available on the internet.
 There is no information on how Google Scholar ranks its results.
Evidence suggests that more-frequently linked articles are likely to be
ranked more highly than others; articles that are not available online are
more likely to be missed.
 The grouping mechanism is not perfect – you may get duplicate results
which aren’t linked into a group (see Searching), but are actually
versions of the same paper.
Updated December 2016
8