Google Scholar employs the Google search engine to allow for searches for scholarly materials. These include theses, peer-reviewed papers, books,  technical reports and abstracts from many areas of research. It includes full text and citations for many papers including results from academic publishers, universities, professional societies and other scholarly sources. Some access to full text require payment.

Google Scholar allows for a broad search of scholarly literature from one place. It also helps the user identify the most relevant research. The user can locate the full text on the web or through a library and learn about important papers in any given field of research. Papers are ranked by full text, author, the publication including it and the frequency of citation in other scholarly literature with the most relevant papers appearing on the first page of the results.

Google Scholar provides links to published papers and open access articles. By using the “Related articles” features, the user can access a results list of other closely related articles ranked by similarity and relevance.

The criticisms of Google Scholar primarily focus on the relatively few papers offered in full at no charge. Users report that most searches result in links that are unavailable to those outside of a university’s subscribed database.

Categories: Glossary
Tags: google scholar, google web search