Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a Google search engine that is entirely dedicated to research. When we go to "Google" to search, we are often looking at everything that is available on the internet, which means a lot of things that are commercial in nature and may not represent the kind of information and knowledge we are seeking. When you search on Google Scholar, it focuses only on journals, books, and other publications that are considered research in nature. Using Google Scholar can help find resources and information that is much more grounded in evidence.

Note: Google Scholar is great for finding out if research exists on a topic but it does not necessarily provide access to that research.

The following are tips and advice on how to get the best results when using Google Scholar. These materials are adapted from Google Scholar's Help materials & we recommend you check them out if you want to get more out of Google Scholar.

Improving Search

• To find work by particular authors, use the term author as part of the search.

  1. author:"G Anzaldúa"

  2. author:"Gloria Anzaldúa"

• Put the title in quotations: "Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy"

• You can sometimes get better results by choosing the data range and then sorting by relevance. You can adjust the dates and sort by relevance in the left sidebar

• To see the newest articles, select "Sort by date" in the left sidebar (If on a smaller screen and you don't see the sidebar, these options are available in the dropdown menu labelled "Any time" right below the search button.)

• If you find an article is useful and want to find similar articles, select "Related articles" under the given article.

• If you want to use advanced search, select the arrow to the right of the search box.

• Abstracts (brief descriptions) are available for most articles. However, access to the article may not. If the article is not available when you select the link, here are a few things to try:

  1. Select the link labeled [PDF] to the right of the search result (if present)

  2. Select the link labeled "All versions" under the article listing and check out the alternative sources

  3. Select the link labeled "Related articles" or "Cited by" under the article listing to explore similar articles.

Getting better answers

• If you're new to the subject, it may be helpful to pick up the terminology from secondary sources. E.g., a Wikipedia article for "culturally relevant teaching" might suggest a Scholar search for "Teaching the Whole Child".

• If the search results are too specific for your needs, check out what they're citing in their "References" sections. Referenced works are often more general in nature.

• Similarly, if the search results are too basic for you, click "Cited by" to see newer papers that referenced them. These newer papers will often be more specific.

• There's rarely a single answer to a research question. Click "Related articles" or "Cited by" to see closely related work, or search for author's name and see what else they have written.

Since a lot of research is behind paywalls, you may find articles that you are interested in but cannot actually access them without paying. We offer several strategies to help navigate this.

1. Check to see if you can find the article through the databases at your local library.

2. Reach out to your local librarian to see if they can acquire it on your behalf.

3. Search Internet Scholar Archive to see if you can locate it there.

4. Use the browser extension, Unpaywall to see if there is somewhere you can find it.

5. If possible, locate the author's name and email and reach out to them to ask if you can get a copy of their paper (often, the authors are happy to share).

6. Search for the article by looking for it as a PDF in Google. Take the title of the article and put it into a search in Google (not Google Scholar). Before you hit search, make sure you put quotation marks at the beginning and ending of the title. Also, in the search box include the following: filetype:pdf. Therefore, the search might look something like: "Title of the Article" filetype:pdf