You can access Google Scholar via a computer or a mobile device. [1] X Research source The Google Chrome browser also has a Google Scholar Button you can add to make searching easier. [2] X Research source
For instance, if you are interested in Vietnamese culture, you could type in ‘the culture of the Vietnamese people. ’ Generally, however, using as few search terms as possible will return broader results. For instance, you could also just search for ‘Vietnamese people’ or ‘Vietnamese culture. ’ If you are having trouble finding relevant results, try an additional or different set of search terms. For instance, if you are interested in the everyday life of Vietnamese people, and ‘Vietnamese people’ isn’t returning useful results, try searching for ‘Vietnamese people customs. ’ Google Scholar allows you to look for articles and other scholarly sources (including patents) as well as case law (if you are doing legal research). Just click the circular radio button (found below the search bar) corresponding to the type of search you want to do.
For example, if you search for ‘Vietnamese Culture,’ you might see a result for the article “Culture Shock: A Review of Vietnamese Culture and its Concepts of Health and Disease,” and see that it is by M. D. Nguyen, and was published in the Western Journal of Medicine in 1985. You might be interested in the specific topic (Vietnamese culture and health), or the author, or the fact that it was published in 1985. You might also be able to see a brief abstract or snippet of text from the result, which can help you determine if it is relevant to your search.
Clicking on a search result might take you to the full text, an abstract, a snippet, or a limited preview. If you are logged into your institutional account, Google Scholar may provide links for full-text access. If you are logged into your Harvard account, for instance, look for “Availability at Harvard” and/or “FindIt@Harvard” for more information about whether or not you can access the full text of particular sources. If you don’t have an institutional or library account, some restricted sources may have the option of paying a fee to view them. If a source you want to view is restricted, you can also click “All Versions” at the bottom of the citation information. If the source is accessible via other databases, you might be able to find one that is non-restricted.
You can access the advanced search options in a few ways: by clicking the downward-pointing arrow at the right edge of the search box when you first pull up the Google Scholar page, or by using the menu to the left of the search results to filter them after you have already begun your research. For example, if you are interested in what has been written about Vietnamese culture since 2016, you can enter ‘Vietnamese Culture’ in the Google Scholar search box, then click “Since 2016” on the left-hand menu once the service pulls up the search results.
Entering a minus sign (“-”) before a search term will eliminate it from the results. For instance, if you are researching Vietnamese culture but do not want to find results related to the Vietnam War, searching for ‘Vietnamese culture -war’ will stop Google Scholar from giving results that use the key term “war. ” By typing OR (must be capitalized) between search terms, Google Scholar with retrieve results containing either term. If you are interested in the culture of both Vietnam and Thailand, you can search for ‘Vietnam OR Thailand culture’.
Searching for an exact phrase by putting it in quotation marks. Putting the search terms Vietnamese culinary traditions will return all sources containing the words traditions, culinary, and Vietnamese, while searching for “Vietnamese culinary traditions” (in quotation marks) will only return with results with that phrase–those exact words, in that exact order. Requesting sources with a particular term in the title by using the command “intitle:”. If you want to find works on Vietnamese food traditions with the word “culinary” in the title, search for ‘Vietnamese intitle:culinary’. Restricting results to those by a particular author by entering “author:” before the name. For example, if you want to find works on Vietnamese culture by M. Thomas, enter ‘Vietnamese culture author:Thomas, M. ’
Keep in mind that Google Scholar only tracks citations in works that the service already indexes, and that the “Cited by” number is not the absolute number of citations. This means, for instance, that it will not show if a source is cited in a journal that Google Scholar does not include in its searches.
For instance, creating an alert for ‘Vietnamese cultural traditions’ will send you an email anytime Google Scholar finds new sources using those key terms.
You can access the “My library” feature from the top center of the Google Scholar main page, or from the left-hand menu from a page of search results.
Many of its search results are restricted. You cannot limit by the type of source you want to find (e. g. , books only, or articles only). You cannot know which databases Google Scholar uses to find its search results. There are sometimes errors in the way Google Scholar records data (e. g. , journal names may mistakenly be listed as authors) Some results that Google Scholar retrieves (such as personal web pages, non-peer-reviewed articles, etc. ) may not be traditionally-defined scholarship.
