Searching Google Scholar

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Searching Google Scholar®

Ackowledgement

The content of this manual was taken from Google Scholar, and is used for educational purposes only. Where necessary it has been adapted according to the needs of customers of the Unisa Library. Google Scholar remains the sole copyright owner of all Google Scholar related content in this manual.

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Part 1: Understand the information architecture of the

academic/scholarly Web

What is the academic or scholarly Web?

Academic or scholarly information resources include visible Web (non-library) and invisible Web (academic library), fee- and free-based, as well as peer-reviewed and non-refereed information resources accessed via the Web.

What is the difference between the Visible and the Invisible Web? Visible/surface/indexable/open Web:

The visible Web comprises all information on the Web that is crawled and

indexed by Web search engines, i.e. information that can be retrieved using Web search tools. Also referred to as the open Web (Devine & Egger-Sider, 2004; Lewandowski & Mayr, 2006:532; Sherman & Price, 2001:55).

Invisible/deep/hidden Web:

The invisible Web is “text pages, files, or other often high quality authoritative information available via the Web, that conventional or general purpose Web search engines cannot, due to technical limitations, or will not, due to deliberate choice, add to their indices of webpages”. Web search tools are unable to crawl

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4 or index the information due to the format, e.g. real-time data, database content, dynamically generated material, and require subscription or authentication such as registration or a password. It includes free- and fee-based resources as well as academic library resources (Devine & Egger-Sider, 2004; Lewandowski & Mayr, 2006:532; Sherman & Price, 2001:57).

What is open access?

Open access, in terms of scholarly communication, can be defined as “a process by which scholarly, peer reviewed journal articles are made freely available to anyone anywhere over the WWW” (Morrison, 2006b:2) and “a reader of a scientific publication can read it over the Web, print it out and even further distribute it for non-commercial purposes without any payments or restrictions” (Björk, 2004:2).

The Web contains a growing number of scholarly fulltext documents available on four basic open access mediums that include (Björk, 2004; De Beer, 2005:8): • Electronic, open access journals

• Research or subject-specific archive (e-print) servers

• Institutional repositories of individual universities (electronic theses and dissertations)

• Self-posting on the webpages of scholars, professional bodies, learned societies and departments.

What are open Web resources?

A vast and diverse body of scholarly knowledge now lies in open Web resources, outside the boundaries of the (physical and virtual) academic library. Open Web resources can be defined as freely accessible and public open Web-based scholarly/academic information resources, available to anyone searching or browsing the Web.

What is a Scholarly/academic Web search engine?

This is a specialised search engine aimed at finding scholarly or academic information on the Web. It provides a simple and rapid way to broadly search for scholarly literature, across many disciplines and formats, and diverse sources, and can be searched from one convenient place (Notess, 2005:39).

Examples: Scirus® http://www.scirus.com (Scientific search engine)

Google Scholar® http://scholar.google.com (Interdisciplinary search engine).

Why should I use Scholarly Web search engines?

The scholarly Web provides direct access to valuable free information discovery tools and open access resources (lots of free fulltext content)

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5 been conducted to compare the performance and retrieval of Web search engines with academic library databases. (Xie, 2004; Gardner & Eng, 2005; Callicott & Vaughn, 2005; Walters, 2007; Neuhaus et al.,2006). Overall, the studies indicate that free online scholarly Web search engines alone are not a comprehensive tool for research.

• Ideally, academic Web research should include not only the academic library’s invisible Web resources (academic library’s electronic

collections), but also the visible Web resources using the scholarly search engines (Egger-Sider & Devine, 2005). Web-based scholarly search engines are very useful for finding the vast array of valuable free open access content that is available via open access platforms such as

institutional/subject repositories etc. (due to the format or freshness of the information, it is not indexed by the native Unisa Library databases). • Scholarly Web search engines are therefore not an alternative to the traditional academic library databases, but an excellent supplement. • As no search engine covers the entire Web, and the coverage of search

engines differ, research on the visible open Web should preferably include more than one general or scholarly Web search engine (Jacso, 2005a). Use Google Scholar together with e.g. Scirus.

Part 2: Introduction to Google Scholar

What is Google Scholar?

Google Scholar covers research documents such as journal articles

(peer-reviewed and non peer-(peer-reviewed), conference papers, theses, books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports and other scholarly information.

Google Scholar pulls its content from three sources (Walters, 2007:1): • Google’s spiders crawl publicly accessible, scholarly, open Web

documents (fulltext documents, citations and abstracts).

• Previously invisible, access-restricted content from journal publishers, scholarly societies, database vendors and academic institutions (mainly citations and abstracts) are now freely available through cooperative agreements.

• Citations are harvested from the reference lists of documents found through the previous two sources (citations only).

What are the benefits of Google Scholar?

• Fast and easy to use - simple, single-user interface with one point of entry – convenient if you are accustomed to the Google search interface

• Free search tool that offers content that is free, open, visible and retrievable

• Indexes academic literature across an array of publishing types and formats

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6 • Valuable resource discovery tool when conducting interdisciplinary

research as it covers a wide range of subject disciplines

• Useful as a starting point during the literature review process or to obtain a general overview of a topic or to explore the seminal and core literature on a topic before the academic library databases are consulted

• Broad, comprehensive and international coverage

• Important free citation source that indexes resources that the traditional commercial citation databases do not cover

• Important vehicle for discovering open access literature and finding free versions of otherwise inaccessible information, e.g. tracking down grey literature such as conference papers and proceedings that are usually very difficult to locate via the academic library channels

• Displays multiple formats and versions of the same document, e.g. an author’s draft article, pre-prints, working papers, self-archived journal articles, conference presentations and technical reports; this enables the Web searcher to see the life cycle of the information from the initial informal open access working paper/draft to the final article as published via the formal publishing channels. Google Scholar sometimes returns more current results than Unisa Library databases, due to its ability to access early versions of works in progress and open access publications. • Saves time by quickly generating useful links to fulltext documents or a list

of search results on any topic

What are the limitations of Google Scholar?

• lack of version control

• inconsistency in citation styles

• incompleteness (gaps in its coverage of published scholarly literature). There is no list of resources indexed by Google Scholar; therefore, there is no way of knowing how comprehensive searches are - i.e. you do not know what items are not covered

• lack of controlled vocabulary, subject classification, authority files and indexing terms

• cannot limit search results to high-quality peer-reviewed research

information, as non-refereed content cannot be excluded from the search results

• Does not allow you to mark, sort, organise, save or e-mail results (compared to the library databases)

• Searching for journal names (including journal name abbreviations) can be problematic

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What are the subject fields covered by Google Scholar?

Content, according to Google Scholar (October 2005): • Medicine (~22%)

• Engineering (~14%) • Biology (~13%)

• Social Sciences (~13%)

• Chemistry and Physics (~12%) • Humanities, Business, Law

How do I access Google Scholar?

Enter the following URL in the address bar of your Internet Browser:

http://scholar.google.com or http://www.scholar.google.com

Part 3: Basic and advanced Google Scholar searching

How do I search Google Scholar?

Scholar offers both basic and advanced search options. For a basic search, enter text in the query box and click on the search button, to perform a keyword

search. If your topic is more than one word, simply put quotation marks around your chosen terms so that Google keeps the words together and searches for an exact phrase. For example: “Higher Education” “South Africa”. Search terms are automatically combined using AND unless you indicate otherwise. Google Scholar searches for your keywords in the fulltext of its sources.

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What do all the links under each item in the results list mean?

Results for both Basic Search and Advanced Search are displayed in the same way.

Under each item in your results list, you will see some or all of the following links. • Title – links to the abstract of the article or, when available on the Web,

the complete article.

• Cited by – links to a list of documents that have cited the original document. This is one way of finding documents that are related to the original document.

• Related Articles – links to a list of documents that are related to the original article. (The original article is not necessarily cited in the documents.)

• Cached – the snapshot that Google took of the page as they crawled the Web. The page may have changed since that time.

• BL Direct – links to the British Library Direct site, which will give you the option of purchasing the fulltext of the article. Remember to check the Unisa Library’s e-Journal portal before paying for a document.

• Import into Refworks – link to export references from Google Scholar to Refworks. This is a way to keep track of the articles that you find.

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How are the Google Scholar results displayed and ranked?

Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar displays search results by how relevant they are to your query, i.e.the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the fulltext of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also

automatically analyses and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal item that appear only in books or other offline publications. The most relevant results will always appear on the first Google Scholar results page. This differs from the Unisa Library databases, where the default display mode is usually descending by date i.e. the latest information is displayed first.

Google Scholar hits can be categorised into four different document types: Link

Citation PDF link

Other formats such ac PS, DOC, RTF.

How can I change the display to see the most recent articles?

Click on the dropdown menu “anytime”. A box with a pull-down menu will appear with the options “since (followed by a year)”. Use the pull-down menu to select the desired year.

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Can I sort and display search results by date, author, publication, etc.?

No. Results in Google Scholar are always displayed in order of relevance and cannot be re-sorted to display by date, author, publication or any other variable.

How can I limit my search or perform more specific searches?

When a search strategy retrieves too many results, you can make use of the limiting features in the advanced search mode. When a search strategy retrieves too few or no results, you have to broaden your search by including synonyms and related terms.

The Advanced Scholar Search screen offers a much more focused search, with particular elements specified and searched for. These include a search of all specified terms, an exact phrase, and the option to exclude specific words from a search. Even greater precision is possible by combining additional search limits (including author, date, publication, language or subject area) if required. Advice and help in performing Advanced Google Scholar searches can be found on the Advanced Search Tips page.

1. To search, simply choose the field(s) that best match your query. 2. Type your term(s) or phrase into the field(s).

3. Add any additional limits such as author, date(s) as required. 4. Click on the Search Scholar button.

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How do I print, save or email Google Scholar search results?

Print or save Google Scholar search results by selecting the command from the Internet browser menu. A search results web page or url (link) can be emailed by selecting the send command from Internet Browser menu. Alternatively search results can be cut and pasted into Microsoft Word.

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How do I save my Google Scholar search results in Refworks?

You will need to configure Google Scholar to enable/display the Import into

Refworks link on the search interface. Preferences allow users to customise the

interface to their particular requirements. Note that preferences will not be saved if you have disabled cookies in your Internet browser.

To save results to a Refworks library:

• Click Scholar Preferences and scroll down to the bottom of the screen. • At Bibliography Manager, select Show links to import citations

into…

• Use the drop-down list to select Refworks. • Click Save Preferences.

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13 After performing a search, click on the Import into Refworks link under the reference you want to import. You will then be prompted to save the reference to a particular Refworks library. Only one reference can be imported at a time. Remember to login to Refworks before you save the reference in Refworks.

Can I use Google Scholar for citation analysis?

Google Scholar is a free citation analysis tool that can be used in conjunction with the traditional (Library) commercial subscription citation products such as ISI Web of Science or Scopus. Google Scholar provides “cited by” references, and provides information to researchers about who is citing their work. Using Google Scholar together with Web of Science and Scopus produces a more

comprehensive picture of research impact. The “cited by” feature on Google Scholar is a quick link to additional resources.

Google Scholar’s value as a citation analysis resource resides in its coverage of unique non-periodical material that is not covered in Web of Science. Important obscure or recent versions of material outside the traditional electronic peer-reviewed journal literature include conference proceedings, books, pre-prints, institutional repository materials, etc.

Can I access Google Scholar from my browser toolbar?

The Google Scholar bookmarklet allows you to search Google Scholar directly from your browser toolbar. To install:

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How can I increase my visibility as Unisa researcher in Google Scholar?

Google Scholar can be a valuable global platform for researchers to enhance their visibility and research impact. If your publications are searchable via Google Scholar, you increase discoverability of your publications and it will be read by a wider audience and therefore cited more frequently. The Unisa Institutional repository (UIR) is an open access digital repository of the research and

intellectual outputs: http://uir.unisa.ac.za. By submitting your publications to this useful self-archiving facility, you will ensure that Google Scholar’s robot software crawl and index your publications. Below an example of UIR items visible in Google Scholar:

For assistance with your UIR submissions, contact the UIR via email

[email protected] or your Personal Librarian.

What should I do if my Google Scholar search results don’t provide what I need?

Google Scholar searching is very basic and it is advisable that you use the more advanced and sophisticated interfaces and in-depth information retrieval features offered by the Unisa Library databases. Use Google Scholar in conjunction with the academic library’s resources. Google Scholar is not a comprehensive resource and therefore the academic library’s resources (virtual and physical resources) should always be your primary information resource.

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15 The Unisa Library subscribes to approximately 250 databases and electronic resources that provide focused, up-to-date and comprehensive information. Visit the Unisa Library webpage http://www.unisa.ac.za/library to view the list of electronic resources, available as an A - Z list or organised by subject.

Alternatively, contact your Personal Librarian for assistance to identify the most appropriate subject databases for your research.

Part 4: Locating the fulltext of publications retrieved via Google

Scholar

How do I obtain the fulltext of items listed in my Google Scholar search results?

1. Type a search term into the Google Scholar search box 2. A list of results are displayed

3. If the fulltext of the item is available via Google Scholar, you can click on the title of the item in blue and you will be brought directly to the fulltext.

4. When you click on a url or link in Google Scholar and the fulltext content has disappeared (404 not found error message), you may find an archived version of the web page in the Wayback Machine or Internet archive: http://www.archive.org

What if the fulltext of an article is not available for free on Google Scholar?

Google Scholar results will often be displayed only as a citation with an abstract (no fulltext) or alternatively you can purchase a subscription to the journal or website, or pay to view the individual article in fulltext. Google Scholar is a useful tool to identify articles and generate references. If you are required to purchase content, rather search for the fulltext of the specific item you require via the Unisa Library website.

Open a new browser screen and go to the Unisa Library e-Journal portal located on the library’s homepage at http://www/.unisa.ac.za/library. From the Google Scholar results list, copy and paste the name of the journal that contains the article for which you are looking, into the Unisa e-Journal Portal search box and click on search.

If the journal is electronically available, links to the database(s) where it is accessible will be given in the E-journal Portal, and you then click on this link to go through to the database. The E-journal Portal will direct you to the database where you will find the full text of the article.

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What if the fulltext of an article is not available via Google Scholar or the Unisa e-Journal Portal?

There are several options available:

1. Go to the Unisa Library catalogue, type the name of the journal (not the article title or author!) into the Journal Title search box. The search results will indicate if the Unisa library subscribes to the journal in electronic or print/hard copy format.

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17 2. Copies of publications are sometimes available on the open access

repositories to download for free e.g. gray literature such as conference proceedings and symposium papers etc. Search the TITLE of the article in Google (not Google Scholar) as a phrase and limit the search by

combining it with the author surname if too many items are retrieved. See example below:

3. Request electronic copies of articles directly from the author. Use a web search engine or a Unisa Library database such as Scopus to locate the email address of the author. Authors very often email PDF copies of their publications to you on request for free.

4. Request a copy via the interlibrary loan section of the Unisa library by sending an e-mail to: [email protected].

How do I find books cited in Google Scholar?

Google Scholar includes results from Google Book search. Google Book gives fulltext access to out of copyright pre-1923 literature. A distinct advantage of Google Book is that it searches the fulltext of books - not just the metadata; therefore, you can search words, phrases or subjects within a book (in and out of copyright books). If a reference to a book in the public domain (post -1923) is found via Google scholar, you can search for it in the Unisa Library catalogue at

http://oasis.unisa.ac.za to locate the shelf number in the Unisa Library.

If book is not available in the Unisa library collection, you can conduct a search for South African library holdings via Worldcat http://www.worldcat.org. This resource allows you to search the collections of libraries around the world at once for an item. WorldCat is the world's largest network of library content and covers approximately 1.4 billion items in various formats. It is a free open web source that is useful for citation verification.

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References:

Björk, B-C. 2004. Open access to scientific publications – an analysis of the barriers to change? Information Research, 9(2): paper 170. [Online]. Available WWW: http://InformationR.net/ir/9-2/paper170.html (Accessed 20 January 2004). Blankenship, E.F. 2008. Who holds the keys to the Web for Libraries? Journal of Library Administration, 47(1/2):55-65.

Bronshteyn, K. 2008. Using Google Scholar at the Reference desk. Journal of Library Administration. 47(1/2): 115-124.

Callicott, B. & Vaughn, D. 2005. Google Scholar vs. Library Scholar: testing the performance of Schoogle. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 10(3/4):71-88. Devine, J. & Egger-Sider, F. 2004. Beyond Google: The invisible Web in the academic library. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30(4):265-269.

De Beer, J.A. 2005. Open Access scholarly communication in South Africa: a role for National Informaton Policy in the National System of Innovation. M.Phil dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch.

Egger-Sider, F. & Devine, J. 2005. Google, the invisible Web, and librarians: slaying the research Goliath. Internet Reference Librarian, 10(3/4):89-101. Gardner, S. & Eng, S. 2005. Gaga over Google? Scholar in the Social Sciences. Library Hi Tech News, 22(8):42-45.

Grogg, J.E. & Ashmore, B.A. 2008. Google Book Search Libraries and their digital copies. Journal of Library Administration, 47(1/2):125-140.

Hartman, K.A. & Mullen, L.B. 2008. Google Scholar and academic libraries: an update. New Library World, 109(5/6):211-222

Jackson, M. 2008. Using metadata to discover the buried treasure in Google Book search. Journal of Library Administration, 47(1/2):165-173.

Jacso, P. 2005a. Visualizing overlap and rank differences among Web-wide search engines. Online Information Review, 29(5):554-560.

Lewandowski, D. & Mayr, P. 2006. Exploring the academic invisible Web. Library Hi Tech, 24(4):529-539.

Mayer, P. & Walter, A. 2007. An exploratory study of Google Scholar. Online Information Review, 31(6):814-830.

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19 Morrison, H.G. 2006b. The dramatic growth of open access: implications and opportunities for resource sharing. Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 16(3). [Online]. Available WWW:

http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00004558/02/dramatic.pdf (Accessed 30 April 2007).

Neuhaus, C., Neuhaus, E., Asher, A. & Wrede, C. 2006. The depth and breadth of Google Scholar: an empirical study. portal: Libraries and the Academy,

6(2):127-141.

Noruzi, A. 2005. Google Scholar: The new generation of citation indexes. Libri, 55(4):170-180.

Notess, G.R. 2005. Scholarly Web searching: Google Scholar and Scirus. Online, 29(4):39-41.

Quint, B. 2008. Changes at Google Scholar: a conversation with Anurag Acharya. Journal of Library Administration, 47(1/2):77-79.

Robinson, M.L. & Wusteman, J. 2007. Putting Google Scholar to the test: a preliminary study. Program: electronic library and information systems, 41(1):71-80.

Schroeder, R. 2007. Pointing users towards citation searching: using Google Scholar and Web of Science. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 7(2):243-248. Sherman, C. & Price, G. 2001. The Invisible Web: Uncovering information sources search engines can’t see. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today. Walters, W.H. 2007. Google Scholar coverage of a multidisciplinary field. Information Processing and Management, 43(4):1121-1132.

Xie, H. 2004. Online IR system evaluation: online databases versus Web search engines. Online Information Review, 28(3):211-219.

Searching Google Scholar