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An increasingly popular article database is Google Scholar. It looks like a regular Google search, and it aims to include the vast majority of scholarly resources available. While it has some limitations (like not including a list of which journals they include), it’s a very useful tool if you want to cast a wide net.
Here are three tips for using Google Scholar effectively:
- Add your topic field (economics, psychology, French, etc.) as one of your keywords. If you just put in “crime,” for example, Google Scholar will return all sorts of stuff from sociology, psychology, geography, and history. If your paper is on crime in French literature, your best sources may be buried under thousands of papers from other disciplines. A set of search terms like “crime French literature modern” will get you to relevant sources much faster.
- Don’t ever pay for an article. When you click on links to articles in Google Scholar, you may end up on a publisher’s site that tells you that you can download the article for $20 or $30. Don’t do it! You probably have access to virtually all the published academic literature through your library resources. Write down the key information (authors’ names, title, journal title, volume, issue number, year, page numbers) and go find the article through your library website. If you don’t have immediate full-text access, you may be able to get it through inter-library loan.
- Use the “cited by” feature. If you get one great hit on Google Scholar, you can quickly see a list of other papers that cited it. If they cited that work, then these papers may also be useful to you. For example, the search term “crime economics” yielded this hit for a 1988 paper that appeared in a journal called Kyklos:
Using Google Scholar
Watch this video to get a better idea of how to utilize Google Scholar for finding articles. While this video shows specifics for setting up an account with Eastern Michigan University, the same principles apply to other colleges and universities. Ask your librarian if you have more questions.
Credit: “Using Google Scholar” by EMU Library License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube License.
LICENSE AND ATTRIBUTION
Adapted from Lumen Learning’s “Google Scholar” from English Composition II used according to CC BY 4.0.