In this session we will look at

Coverage

Advance searching

Results list

Citation searching

Reference management


The GOOD The baD
Coverage
Almost 100% coverage of journals
from partner databases and
publicly available TOCs
Addition of new data in approx 9
days
Includes non-typical resources (e.g.
Some blogs, academics websites)
Participates with approx 2,900
scholarly publishers

Full coverage not known (GS has
never produced a list of sources)
Cannot index some records from
databases (eg. non journal records)
Cannot index journals that have
ceased publication

The GOOD The baD
Advanced searching
Limit by date range
Search selected subject area
Search for exact phrase
Limit by author / publication

Cannot limit by material type
Can only restrict to broad subject
area
Can specify search, but only using
Google operators, not boolean
Limiting by publication year not
always accurate (records
sometimes interpret page numbers
as dates )
The GOOD The baD
Results list
Link to library holdings (on and off
campus)
Finds articles regardless of where
they are (repository, journal site)

Few options to refine search
No option to sort (e.g. by material
type)
Relevance and ranking based on
quantitative rather than qualitative
data
Deduplication of results not
always presented with best
version

The GOOD The baD
Citation searching
Cited by displayed on results page
One click to view citing texts
Indexes a broad range of sources
(articles, pre-prints, books)
Includes citations missed by other
databases such as Web of Science
Can search within citing articles
to filter results

Poor quality metadata
No clear indication of which
journals are covered
Includes citations from non-
academic sources e.g. blogs
No clear way to conduct a cited
reference search for anything not
indexed in GS like in WOS

The GOOD The baD
Alerts
Keyword search alerts (email)
Citation alerts (email)
New papers from specific authors
(email)
No RSS
Limited options to refine your
searches
Does not work with Google alerts
No alerts for new papers from
specific journals (GS indexes
papers not journals)


The GOOD The baD
Reference management
Can export to EndNote,
Works with Zotero and Mendeley
allowing for all or any of the
references on a page to be added at
once
Zotero imports the PDF where
available in GS and Mendeley
imports the links
Only one reference at a time can be
exported into EndNote
Poor metadata can lead to
inaccurate references being added
The Ugly
Poor quality metadata

Year data can come from page numbers, volume/issue numbers parts of
fax/phone numbers , postal codes and other numeric data (Hoseth 2011)
Phantom authors created by menu items on the hosts sites search page,
classification descriptors, affiliation institutions and journal names (Jasc
2010)
Can take 3 months to a year to correct inaccurate records (Google Scholar
2011)
No controlled terms for author, journal title or subject terms (Walters 2009)

Ask yourself

a searcher who is unwilling to search multiple databases or to adopt a
sophisticated search strategy is likely to achieve better than average
recall and precision by using Google Scholar. Walters 2009 p.16

Google Scholar, while very popular, is used as a secondary database
more often than as a primary one. Researchers value the ease and speed
of Google Scholar, but may also perceive its quality and precision
limitations. Hightower and Caldwell 2010






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