

If you want to learn more about Open Access, aka OA, you can read more here. In particular, Google has good coverage of non-English sources, as well as Open Access articles and those contained in institutional repositories! Some databases may not carry these, and this was a benefit found across articles published from 2012-2017 on Google Scholar’s coverage (Dewan, 2012 Halevi, Moed, & Bar-Ilan, 2017 Quint, 2015).Only credible, scholarly material is included in Google Scholar, according to the inclusion criteria: “content such as news or magazine articles, book reviews, and editorials is not appropriate for Google Scholar.” Technical reports, conference presentations, and journal articles are included, as are links to Google Books.Together a pros and cons list for Google Scholar. This means you won’t have to do as much poking around to find the full-text of articles as you would with Google Scholar. While Google Scholar has great benefits, Omni will only bring up articles that you have access to. One more thing: if you’re wondering whether you should use Google Scholar over Omni, which is on our library homepage, I would recommend sticking with Omni. To use it in combination with other subject-specific databases. Turns up stuff you wouldn’t find elsewhere. Research process on a topic, it finds credible journal articles, and it often It can be helpful when you’re starting the Not use Google Scholar? If I had to give you one, I’d say go aheadĪnd use Google Scholar. Google Scholar’s results, like regular Google, are created by aĬomputer: Google scans different webpages for scholarly material, with lessĬare going into the journals that publish these articles. “Scholarly”ĭatabases usually index articles on specific disciplines or topics, withĬertain journals being included on purpose.

As their “ About” page says: Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature.Ĭollects its information is different from other databases. Google Scholar intends to be a place for researchers to start. But, is it as credible as other databases? Unfortunately it’s not that simple: Google Scholar’s purpose and function are just different from other databases. Over the last few years, the usefulness of Google Scholar has really improved. Links reviewed and updated November 29, 2020.
