Using Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a great tool for metasearching, but it is not perfect.
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It has gaps in subject coverage
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Has very little full text.
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Hardly covers open access resources (free full text) on the web.
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Heavily favors health science over all other subjects.
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Cited by links are incomplete compared to Web of Science and Scopus.
As with all research, using multiple tools will generate the best results. Don't just use Google Scholar.
Many of you are already familiar with Google Scholar, Google's search engine for scholarly articles and other material. The UGA Library has put the Google Scholar Search box on our home page:
If you type your search into this box it will search Google Scholar without having to go to the Google Scholar homepage. This is actually better than going to the Google Scholar website yourself.
By using the search box on the Library's homepage, you will get links within Google Scholar that will search our electronic journals and GIL to find the articles for you, the same as if you clicked on a "Find it @ UGA" button. Google Scholar mostly has citations and only 8% of its links are full text. By searching through the Library's homepage, you get more full text.
If you click on the "Cited By" link you can find even more articles related to your topic.
As with Google, the original, using the Advanced Search feature instead of the Basic Search can go a long way in limiting the number of citations found. It can mean the difference between getting several thousand hits versus only a few dozen.
The Advanced Search feature of Google Scholar actually has even more ways to limit your searches.You can specifically search for articles by certain authors, dates, or publications, something that you can't do in Google.
You can also limit your search by subject area. ***It is important to note that Google Scholar focuses on information from the Health Sciences (it indexes PubMed), so information from the natural sciences, social sciences (like politics), arts, and humanities will have much less information.***
Advanced Search Tips from Google Scholar
The UGA Libraries Google Scholar web page.