Using Google Scholar for Your Research

Overview of this guide

Google Scholar is a search engine that provides links to articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and scholarly articles posted on the web. It also provides links to relevant published books that are found in the Google Books Project.

Many students feel comfortable starting their research using Google Scholar because of its similarity to Google's internet search engine. However, because it is a search engine and not a database, it is important to get to know some of the functionality and limitations of Google Scholar first. 

This guide will review:

• Pros and cons of using Google Scholar
• Setting up library links
• Understanding the search results page
• Using the advanced search in Google Scholar

This guide is adapted from the Google Scholar Guide created by Saskia Kusnecov for FDU Libraries, and from the Google for Academic Research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Libraries.

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