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Biology 3210: Molecular Biology: Google Scholar (Google)

A class guide for Biology 3210, Molecular Biology.

Search Google Scholar @ UofL

Provider:  Google, Inc.

Coverage: Varies

Full-text: None -- links to full-text from other sources

Abstracts: Yes

What is Google Scholar?

What is Google Scholar ®?

Google Scholar® is a scholarly article index. It contains article citations, and links to full-text articles when these are freely available online. It can be configured to display links to articles available through the library's subscription databases.

Where does Google Scholar ® get its content?

Google Scholar® collects article citations in several ways:

1) Automated search robots crawl the web and attempt to identify documents that "look scholarly". HTML documents may be identified as "scholarly" by "<meta>" tags in their source code. Documents in .pdf format are evaluated for inclusion based on their visual layout (e.g., the font size ratio between the title and the authors' names)1

2) Once a document has been indexed, citations are automatically extracted from its reference list and added to the database2

3) Journal publishers, academic institutions, scholarly societies, or individual authors can submit content directly for inclusion in the database3

What's the difference between Google Scholar® and other scholarly databases?

  • Unlike many of the subscription databases available through the UofL library, Google Scholar® does not contain full text articles. It includes links to full text only when the article is available freely online, or when it has been configured to provide links to library resources.
  • Subscription databases contain much more information about each article than is available through Google Scholar.®
  • Because Google Scholar® indexes individual articles (as opposed to complete journals), coverage for specific journals is often incomplete.

What are the strengths and weakness of Google Scholar®? 

A major strength of Google Scholar® is its simplicity. Compared to most subscription databases, Google Scholar® is intuitive and easy to use.

Because of its similarity to Google, most users are comfortable with Scholar's basic search features. With such a large database and an advanced search algorithm, it's often possible to retrieve good quality articles with a basic keyword search from Google Scholar®4.

Despite its strengths, Google Scholar® lacks many of the features available in subscription article databases. Advanced search options are limited to basic information, and do not provide the level of fine-grained control available in many subscription databases.

Sources:

  1. "About Google Scholar," Google Inc., accessed March 16, 2012, http://scholar.google.ca/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html#indexing
  2. "Scholar Help," Google Inc., accessed March 16, 2012, http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html
  3. "Support For Scholarly Publishers," Google Inc., accessed March 16,2012, http://scholar.google.ca/intl/en/scholar/publishers.html
  4. William H. Walters, "Comparative Recall and Precision of Simple and Expert Searches in Google Scholar and Eight Other Databases," Libraries and the Academy 11 (2012): 971-1006

Google Scholar Library Links

How do I configure Google Scholar® to display links to library resources?

Google Scholar® can show you whether you have access to a particular article through the library's subscription databases.

If you're accessing Google Scholar® from off-campus, you'll need to configure your Search Preferences to display UofL library resources.

To configure your search Preferences:

  • From the Google Scholar homepage, click on Scholar Preferences
  • Type "University of Lethbridge" in the Library Links field
  • Click Find Library
  • Click Save Preferences

When an article is available, Google Scholar® will display a link labelled Find it @ the U of Lethbridge: 

Click on the Find it @ the U of Lethbridge link to display a list of the library's holdings for the article.