How to Get the Best from Google Scholar

How to get the best from Google Scholar: 5 top tips

Introduction

In this video we will show you 5 top tips for getting the best out of Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a search engine for finding journal articles, books, conference proceedings and other scholarly publications on your topic. If Cardiff University has a subscription, you can access the full text of the articles you find on Google Scholar.

To open Google Scholar, on the Google home page click on More and select Even more. Then find and click on Scholar.

Tip Number 1: Focus your search

Searches on Google Scholar often retrieve thousands of results. To help you get fewer and more focused results there are a few things you can try.

As you enter your search terms, enclose any exact phrases in double quotation marks. This will ensure that Google Scholar only retrieves results where your terms are included together, rather than separately in the article.

If you only need more recent publications, select a year from the panel on the left or choose Custom range to enter a year range of your choosing.

Tip number 2: Access the full text

On the right-hand side of your search results, Google Scholar will indicate if the full text of the publication is available online, whether it is free or available via Cardiff University’s eLibrary. When you are working on-campus you will automatically be shown these Full Text @ Cardiff links.

To view the article just click on the link, then select Go next to one of the options in the eLibrary window which opens.

If you are working off-campus, you will need to switch on these Full Text @ Cardiff links.

At the top of the screen, click on Settings. Then click on Library links on the left- hand side and enter Cardiff University into the search box. Then select the tick box next to Cardiff University – Full Text @ Cardiff, followed by Save.

1 You will now see the Full Text @ Cardiff links in your results. If you follow one of these links and click on Go, you will be prompted to enter your Cardiff University username and password in order to view the full text article.

If there are no Full Text @ Cardiff links displayed on the right-hand side of the screen, under More, you will see the option to Check for print @ Cardiff. This will lead you to a link to carry out an automatic search of the University’s library catalogue to see if there is a copy in the library.

Tip number 3: Set up an email alert

To save you running the same searches regularly on Google Scholar, you can set up email alerts to notify you when new articles matching your search terms have been added. When you are satisfied that the search terms you have entered will give you relevant results, click on Create alert. Enter your email address and click on Create alert.

Tip number 4: Use the Cited By links

Underneath the results you will see Cited By links. These will show you a list of other documents which have included this item in their bibliographies. They are a useful way of quickly identifying other potentially relevant publications.

Tip number 5: Set up the import into EndNote links

If you use EndNote, you may want to set up links to import Google Scholar results into your EndNote Library.

At the top right hand side of the screen, click on the downward arrow and select Settings. Then at the bottom of the screen, select Show links to import citations into and choose EndNote from the menu. Then Save.

In your search results you will now see links which will enable you to import the results into Endnote.

Conclusion

We hope you found this short video useful. If you would like more help with using Google Scholar, please contact your Subject Librarian or consult the Google Scholar help pages.