Google guide

"Google Scholar aims to sort articles the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature. The most relevant results will always appear on the first page."

What is included in Google Scholar?

Peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

Google Scholar is a great place to scan across a lot of sources at once, but it doesn't know what you have rights to access through your own library sources. It might take you to a page that asks you to pay for the article you want. Please talk to a librarian before you pay for articles online!

By using the link to Google Scholar provided by the Camosun Library, you'll get links to the fulltext when the library subscribes to the journal, if it is from an open access journal, or if the author has posted the fulltext on the open web. TIP: when you are at the search box in Google Scholar, if you hover over the down arrow on the right, you can go directly to an advanced search page.

Advantages:

• you may find "grey literature" like conference proceedings
• you will get book and article results in a single search
• it indexes scholarly literature in many disciplines
• it can help you identify journals and/or authors that cover your topic

Limitations:

• you can't limit your search to peer reviewed
• you can't browse by title
• you can't limit your search results
• it has a bias towards older literature - much of which is not fulltext
• you don't know when Google Scholar was last updated. If you're looking for current information, then search our subject databases.

Sometimes you may end up at a publisher's website where the only thing free is the abstract. Before paying for the article, please contact us in the Library.

You can order any articles that are not available online through the library's free interlibrary loan service.

Journal articles usually arrive in 3-7days. 

You may not see the "Find it at Camosun" link displayed at the end of a journal title. There can be several reasons:

• Did you access Google Scholar through the link provided by the Camosun Library? There are also links to Google Scholar in our Databases by title list and within individual research guides.
  • from the Google Scholar home page, check under Settings/Library Links to see that all of the Camosun College options have been checked
  • test out the search "Vancouver island." There should be several articles with the "Find it at Camosun" link. If yes, then you know your settings are correct.
• Google Scholar will list many articles that are not included in the Camosun Library's electronic holdings. Two reasons may be:
  • we do not have fulltext access to that specific journal title
  • we do not have fulltext access to the specific date
• The linking process is not 100% foolproof. You may get links that do not result in the fulltext of the article and you may not be given a link even though the Library does have fulltext access.

To double check print and online holdings for specific journal titles, use the Camosun Publication Finder.

You may have more success searching your topic directly through one of our subject databases.