What is Google Scholar? Instructions on how to use Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a website used to look up and search for documents and academic texts on  mobile phones and  computers  . This article will guide you how to use and outline the advantages and disadvantages of this website.

1. What is Google Scholar?

Google Scholar is a search engine for academic documents including books, scientific journals (Academic journals), theses (dissertation, thesis),. officially published worldwide. The website is often used It is used in academic fields, helping lecturers and students to find and read scholarly information with high accuracy for research, thesis, etc.

2. Pros and cons of Google Scholar

- Advantages of Google Scholar

+ Simple interface

With a simple interface, quite similar to Google, Google Scholar makes it easy for visitors to find information. In addition, the site also has the function of sorting documents by year, you can choose to limit the time the document is published.

+ Massive source material

With Google Scholar, you have access to a vast source of literature from around the world, published in a variety of formats. In addition, the website documents are also linked to the original database in the article, making it convenient and fast for readers to find information.

+ Provide multiple quote styles

The website also supports you to cite (citation) documents in various formats, including  APA ,  MLA ,  ISO 690 . This is extremely convenient for users when they can directly get citations without quoting themselves or using another intermediary source to quote the text.

+ Links with automatic citation software

In addition to direct citation, Google Scholar also supports linking with automatic citation software including BibTeX, EndNote, RefMan, RefWorks. You can copy the author information, publication date, . to make citations in these software.

+ Can be saved to read later

In addition, you can save the article to read later by clicking the star sign below the article. The article will now be added to your library. When you need to review it, simply select My Library in the upper right corner.

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Google Scholar is a useful site for searching scholarly documents

- Disadvantages of Google Scholar

+ Does not support reading before Abstract

Abstract is a short summary that begins a lesson or thesis to clearly state the purpose of the article and its main conclusion, the purpose of which is to help readers quickly identify the objectives and methods of the paper, thereby Help the reader decide whether to click the link or not.

However, Google Scholar currently does not support this feature (this article was made on July 8, 2021).

+ The number of full-text articles is limited

Google Scholar limits the number of full-text articles you can read. Normally, you can only read the opening part of the document, and an additional fee is charged to the Publisher to read all of the document's content.

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+ Algorithm for searching academic documents has some limitations

In addition, Google Scholar's search algorithm still has some limitations. The website is still unable to search for keywords by Abstract or Literature review. The advanced search feature is still quite limited, not classified by field, document type, but only has a category of articles by publication year and includes citations and patents.

+ There are still cases where the citation is wrong

Sometimes Google Scholar's automatic citation still has errors, you need to check each time after citation is correct to avoid putting wrong citations in your article.

3. Google Scholar Interface and Usage

- Search bar

Before you search, you need to identify the keywords you need to find so that the results appear reasonable and relevant to the problem you need.

When searching documents on Google Scholar, you should search by keywords such as author name, publisher name (Nature, Springer, Elsevier, .). If you want to search for a citation phrase in a document, use double quotes '…', for example, 'COVID-19'.

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- Save button (Save)

You can save the article for easy review. First, you just need to click on the star below the article to save the article to the library. Then you go to My Library to review the article you have previously saved.

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- Quick citation button (Quick citation)

To get the auto-generated quick citation of Google Scholar, you just need to click the quotation mark below the article, then the citations will appear, you just need to copy the type of citation you need.

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You can also link to the citation software by clicking on the software.

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In addition to the Quick citation button, there is also the number of articles that have been cited (citations … articles). When clicked, you can see the articles referenced and cited this source.

- Related articles button

When you click this, a new window with a list of related articles will appear. You can find articles related to this area of ​​study here.

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- PDF button

The PDF button usually appears on the right side next to the article. However, not all articles are available, but usually this button only appears in free articles. When you click, a PDF file of the entire document will be displayed for you to read more easily and also easily download.

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- Finder by date

Google Scholar also supports you to search for articles within the desired timeframe. You can select the year of the proposed publication of the desired document in the left corner of the screen. Or you can also manually enter a time limit to search for the article you need.

- Advanced search (Advanced search)

To access the advanced search, click on the three dashes in the upper left corner of the screen. This program can help you filter searches such as finding articles with phrases, without phrases, written by specific authors, etc. When you enter the information you need in the advanced search box, The system will filter the results and output the document you need.

Just now is an introductory article about Google Scholar. Hope the article is useful to you, thank you for watching, see you in other articles!

Micah Soto

Update 09 July 2021