What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar provides an easy way to broadly search for scholarly works from a variety of sources. Like a database, it searches for peer-reviewed papers and other articles in a variety of academic journals and publications. Additionally, it searches for theses, books, abstracts and other works to find the most relevant research on your topic.
Why would you use it?
Google Scholar provides a great starting point to get a feel for the literature in an area of research. If you’re just starting a research project, it can help you to identify some of the main scholars who conduct research on your topic as well as the journals in which they publish their findings. It offers a one-stop search for various types of publications, and allows you to search for the results at the UT Libraries.
How to search in Google Scholar
The easiest way to access Google Scholar is through the front page of the UT Libraries website in the “articles” tab of the big orange LIBsearch box. By connecting through the Libraries website, you will receive search results that allow you to locate books or articles at the UT Libraries. Select Google Scholar, then enter your search term/s in the box where it says “Search for articles using Google Scholar” and hit search.
Understanding your results
Your search will take you out of the libraries website and into a Google Scholar screen presenting your results.
Often, you will be able to access to an article found in Google Scholar through a database subscription held by the UT Libraries. If so, the main link for your results will take you to the article or prompt you for your UTEID if you’re off campus. If the library does not have database access (or if the result you’re interested in is a book) you can click “Library Search” to check the Library Catalog. At the bottom of the results page, you will be presented with a list of key authors who have written about your search topic with links to see what else they have written.
Order of Results
According to Google, Google Scholar sorts articles according to the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the work has been cited in the references of other scholarly works. This is similar to the way that researchers regard articles, and the most relevant results should show up on the first page. If you’re most interested in recent articles, there is a tab you can click at the top of your results to show only recent work.
Advanced Scholar Search
Clicking on “Advanced Scholar Search” to the right of the search bar at the top of your results allows you to refine your search. Here you can search for specific phrases, search by author or date, or select specific subject areas to search. For more help with advanced searches, see Advanced Scholar Search Tips.
Scholar Preferences
This link is located right under “Advanced Scholar Search” to the right of the search bar, and allows you to do things like search for pages written in other languages or designate specific libraries in which to search for the results you find. If you access Scholar from the UT Libraries website, UT will already be selected. Finally, this page has a box you can check under “Bibliography Manager” to display the EndNote importation link shown in the example above.
Need help? Ask A Librarian.
