Skip to Main Content

Google Scholar: Home

Google Scholar and Google Books

About Google Scholar

Google Scholar Search

Google Scholar is a search engine that provides access to a wide variety of scholarly literature including articles, books, dissertations, conference proceedings, legal opinions, and more. The results from a Google Scholar search are more focused on academic and scholarly materials than those returned through a standard Google search. Google Scholar can be a helpful tool for  academic researchers, as it searches a very wide body of results and also provides links to things that cite the item appearing in the results list.

As opposed to the BCC Library's databases, there is no way to limit your search results solely to peer-reviewed articles or full-text when using Google Scholar. Free full-text articles are not always available in Google Scholar. 

Other Google Searches to try:

Google Arts and Culture

Explore different collections from a variety of museums or tour famous landmarks and sites. You can search collections, themes, artists, mediums, art movements, places, historical events or figures. You can also explore with their Art Camera feature zooming in on details in your favorite artworks. 

Art Remix uses Google's Imagen Generative AI model to allow you to remix art with AI.

Google Patents includes over 120 million patent publications from 100+ patent offices around the world, as well as many more technical documents and books indexed in Google Scholar and Google Books.

Searching Google Scholar

Google Scholar Search Climate Change

From Google Scholar Help Page:

Finding recent papers

Your search results are normally sorted by relevance, not by date. To find newer articles, try the following options in the left sidebar:

  1. click "Since Year" to show only recently published papers, sorted by relevance or chose a custom range;
  2. click "Sort by date" to show just the new additions, sorted by date;
  3. click "Any type" to choose Review articles
  4. click "included patents" or "include citations" to narrow your search
  5. click the envelope icon to have new results periodically delivered by email.

Locating the full text of an article (Try your BCC Library!) 

Abstracts are freely available for most of the articles. Alas, reading the entire article may require a subscription to that publication. Here're a few things to try:

  1. click a link labeled [PDF] to the right of the search result;
  2. click "All versions" under the search result and check out the alternative sources;
  3. click "Related articles" or "Cited by" under the search result to explore similar articles.

 Getting better answers

  • If you're new to the subject, it may be helpful to pick up the terminology from secondary sources such as a library book or encyclopedia.  

  • If the search results are too specific for your needs, check out what they're citing in their "References" sections. Referenced works are often more general in nature.

  • Similarly, if the search results are too basic for you, click "Cited by" to see newer papers that referenced them. These newer papers will often be more specific.

  • Explore! There's rarely a single answer to a research question. Click "Related articles" or "Cited by" to see closely related work, or search for author's name and see what else they have written.

  • Also look at the "Related searches" for topic suggestions. 

Citation

Google Scholar Citation

If you use Google Scholar, you can get citations for articles in the search result list. Copy and paste a formatted citation (APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, or Vancouver) or use one of the links to import into your bibliography management tool.

  • Click on the Cite link next to your item.
  • Select your citation style.
  • Paste the citation into your working document.
  • Double check and adjust formatting as needed to match your selected citation style.

Google citation example

Create an Alert

In Google Scholar you can create an alert that will notify you when articles are added that match your search words.

To Create Alerts:

  1. From Google Scholar homepage, expand the menu on the top left
  2. Click the Alerts Envelop on the left
  3. Click Create Alert button and fill out search words and email address
  4. Locate Alerts Envelop in right column to view saved alerts

You can also create alerts for:

Alerts for new articles by an author

You can receive email alerts for any new items linked to a specific author profile within Google Scholar by first navigating to the profile (authors with profiles in Google Scholar will appear underlined in the author list of any given result) and then clicking "Follow" near the top of the page.

Alerts for new items citing an article in Google Scholar

Clicking the "Cited by" link that appears below some items in a Google Scholar results page will take you to a new results page containing the items that cite the original item. Like on any other Google Scholar result page, clicking the "Create alert" button on the left-hand side below the filter options will create a new email alert, in this case for new items that cite the initial work.