How to use Google Scholar

A short introduction to search literature in internet

Google Scholar, abbreviated as GS, is different than Google, since it searches scholarly books, articles, and documents that similar to when someone is searching in the Library’s catalog and databases instead of all public Web content (Sam Houston State University, 2019). But keep in mind GS has some pros and cons that must be noticed in interpretating the search results (Beryl Ivey Library, 20202). There are some tips for students to search using GS (McHugh-Johnson, 2022), but not so technical, that’s way here some more technical steps are given in brief to get better search results.

Features and limitation

GS has some features as fast and easy to use, cite by information, formatted citation, library links, open access journals, science and technology articles, and patents & legal documents (Benedictine University Library, 2023). Unfortunately, despite some claims, GS is not so comprehensive since content in Google Scholar is from 1995 on, although they will have some content from earlier years and in general, it goes back in time much less far than some databases, and absolutely less far than some printed indexes, so some classic studies might be missed (University of Arkansas Libraries, 2023).

Open using web browser

Visit https://scholar.google.com/ to open the Google Scholar with a web browser, e.g. Opera, Safari, Firefox, Edge, Konqueror, or Chrome. Here Chrome is used, install it first if necessary.

Figure 1. Google Scholar opened using Chrome with Incognito mode.

To avoid customized search due to previous search, it is recommended to use Chrome with Incognito mode.

Simple search

Try to put a word, e.g. physics in the search field and press Enter. Following result can be reproduced, but it might produce slightly different result, using https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=physics.

Figure 2. Search result for word physics.

It shows about 6,130,000 results obtained in 0.03 s, which are a huge amount of search results to pile. It is not efficient but it does give the result.

Combining words

What should we do if we are interesting only to elementary physics instead of only physics, which is too general? We can search using this two words https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=elementary+physics and the results are as follow.

Figure 3. Search result for words elementary physics.

It narrows the search result to about 3,880,000 results in 0.09 s. Let’s make it narrower to search elasticity in elementary physics. Visit https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=elementary+physics+elasticity to obtain following results.

Figure 4. Search result for words elementary physics elasticity.

It show only about 186,000 results in 0.08 s, which much fewer.

Phrase instead of words

If order of words is important and the words must be appeared as a phrase, begin the words with " and end it with " , e.g. “elementary physics”, which can be reproduced by visiting https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22elementary%20physics%22 and give following results.

Figure 5. Search result for phrase “elementary physics”.

It shows about 14,500 results in 0.14 s. Compare the results with elementary physics without " and " in Figure 3. Now you can see the difference. Notice that the space between the words elementary and physics is encoded as %20 and the double quote mark as %22.

Then what would be if the phrase is “elementary physics elasticity”? Visit https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22elementary%20physics%20elasticity%22 to get following results.

Figure 6. Search result for phrase “elementary physics elasticity”.

Amazingly, it does not give any results, that means there is not any article with title or content containing the phrase “elementary physics elasticity”.

Exclude words

Back to words, the search can be customized to exclude a word and keep other word. Let’s try to exclude the word physics and keep the word elementary as https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=elementary+-physics with following results.

Figure 7. Search result for word elementary but without word physics.

It gives about 4,240,000 results in 0.02 s and notice that there is any word of physics shown. To exclude a word, put - before a word to be excluded.

See again Figure 2 and we can exclude the word supercollider to have https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=physics+-supercollider as follow.

Figure 8. Search result for word physics but without word supercollider.

Now you can narrow it by further excluding the words mesoscopic and chemoreception, which is https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=physics+-supercollider+-mesoscopic+-chemoreception with following results.

Figure 9. Search result for word physics but without words supercollider, mesoscopic, chemoreception.

Now you have the knowledge how to exclude words from the search results. It can also be performed using Advance Search feature (Levine, 2023).

Include words

Some words can be included by putting + before the words, which is encoded as %2B. For example it should contain the word urban as https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=physics+%2Burban whose results are as follow.

Figure 10. Search result for word physics and must include word urban.

As you can see, the word urban must not direct follow or lead the word physics. But since the phrase “urban physics” is well know it shows most of them.

Figure 11. Search result for phrase “urban physics.

Figure 11 show the result for https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22urban%20physics%22, which is slightly different since the third top result compared to Figure 10.

Site restriction

If you want to search only within a particular site, use site: followed by web address.

Figure 12. Search result for word alloy.

Now try to restrict the search only in American Physical Society site https://www.aps.org/ as follow.

Figure 13. Search result for word alloy only within https://www.aps.org/.

As you can see it reduces result from about 5,040,000 to only 3 results. It is useful if you are sure that only in certain site the results should be located. Even the results are not about articles, but it shows how the site: operator works.

Notice that the link is https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=alloy+site%3Awww.aps.org, where : is encodes as %3A.

Operators

There are at least 44 Google advanced search operators for filtering the search results to produce more precise and focused results (Hardwick, 2023). We already use + using %2B, -, and " using %22, and site: using site%3A.

Notice also that + operators is dropped by Google in 2011 and substituted by " surrounding a word or phrase (Schwartz, 2011), but it still give different result as in Figure 10.

Challenge

• Find some articles for a project, e.g. your final project or a current attended course, from very general search results until very specific search results focused on your expected ones.
• Document your steps and write down all in a Medium story, like this one, and report it in the comment of this story.

I will try comment back so we can help each other to improve our writing skill.