Google Scholar can be a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it has an almost endless number of academic journal articles and books to choose from. On the other hand, it has an almost endless number of academic journal articles and books to choose from. And no one ever seems to teach you how to effectively narrow things down, meaning it can take years to trawl through the many options available to try and find that one key citation you’re looking for. Thankfully, I’ve learned some helpful shortcuts over time which can make using Scholar much easier. There are no doubt many more tricks I’ve yet to learn, but here are some of my favourite tips to help writers use Google Scholar more effectively.
Boolean Terms
Not the first thing I discovered about Google Scholar, but probably the thing that changed my research life most! Boolean terms (light green on the image) help you narrow the search so that it works more effectively. If, for example, you type climate change in the Scholar search bar, it will look for all of the key words separately. Climate and change will not need to appear together as a phrase. But typing it in as “climate change” tells Scholar that you specifically want to look for the term “climate change” and so it will generate answers which use it as a full phrase.
Scholar has many different Boolean terms which you can use to help narrow your search, but some of the most common include:
| Boolean Operator | What it does |
| AND (must be in capitals) | Searches for content where both terms appear (e.g. internet AND identity) |
| OR (must be in capitals) | Includes one term OR another (e.g. film OR television) |
| () | Encapsulates AND/OR statements so that Scholar knows which terms are intended (e.g. (Facebook OR Twitter) and (academic OR scholar)) |
| - | Excludes term from search (e.g. -children) |
| ~ | Searches for the term and its synonyms (e.g. ~academic) |
| ” “ | Exact phrase (e.g. “climate change). Useful when multi-part term or phrase is needed. |
| * | Builds on the root word provided (e.g. stat* will return results relates to stat, state, states, statistics, etc). |
Other Ways to Narrow Searches
The most obvious other way to narrow your Google Scholar search is to set the date range. In STEM-related and other fast-moving fields, this can be particularly important as you don’t want to rely on out-of-date information. Scholar gives a few suggestions of years to search from but you can also set your own ranges. Say, for example, you’re wanting to look up coronaviruses before the Covid-19 pandemic, you might set up a custom date range of 2013-2018 to see what was out there.
Another way to narrow your search further is to use Google Scholar’s Advanced Search, which you can access through the ‘burger’ menu in the top right (orange box in the image above). I will admit that I don’t use this feature much as the Boolean terms can do 99% of the same things, but this search can be particularly useful if looking through work by seminal authors or from particular journals. Naturally, this can make it very useful when writing a literature review or drawing upon the theories of a particular author (especially if they are a rather prolific author!).
You can also narrow by article type, though this is primarily only useful if you’re wanting to look at review articles or want to adapt the search to include patents. I am less familiar with these aspects of Google Scholar though.
Finding Related Texts
Finding papers you want to read, even with carefully selected key words narrowed by Boolean terms, is time consuming. Thankfully, Google Scholar has a few different ways that you can find related articles relatively quickly!
Related Articles
Does what it says on the tin. Clicking on Related Articles will show you articles it thinks are similar to the one you clicked under. If, for example, I click to find articles related to The return of the social author: Negotiating authority and influence on Wattpad (Ramdarshan Bold, 2016), Scholar brings up 101 results related to the article, covering subjects such as Wattpad, digital authorship, book history, and fan labour. This can be a great way to see connections between literature and generate new themes that you may not yet have explored in your research. The drawback of Related Articles is, however, that there’s no way to narrow your search within the related articles. Google Scholar seems to only bring up 101 results in related articles, making the trudge through the links more manageable, but somewhat less convenient than the next method.
Cited By
Like Related Articles, Cited By does what you expect from its name; it brings up other works which have cited your chosen article. This is wonderful for seeing what has come out after a particular piece of work and, as with Related Articles, you’ll often be able to use it to see connections between literature. Unlike Related Articles, Cited By doesn’t limit the results – the article noted above has 102 citations – but thankfully this time you can search within the results. So, for example, if you only wanted to look at results which mention digital authorship, you can tick “Search within citing articles” and make use of whatever keywords or Boolean terms you’d like to. Very helpful!
The Author Name
Less helpful for undergraduate writers, I’d imagine, but very useful as a postgrad, some academics have a Google Scholar profile which links together all their work. If their name (red box in the image above) is hyperlinked, this means they have other works you can look through. These other works can be sorted by year or by citation and can be helpful if you’ve realised a particular academic writes a lot in your field. I find this very helpful to check if I’m drawing a lot from one particular paper by a scholar as it can help me build a picture of how they built up to that paper, or where they have gone since. And it’s good to get familiar with the big names within your field.
Following Research
Keeping up-to-date with research in your field is important, particularly as you begin to narrow into specific subject areas in postgrad. Google Scholar has a couple of ways to help with this:
Follow Authors
Clicking on the Author Name, as detailed above, brings you to the academic’s scholar page and this can be helpful for seeing what else they have published. More importantly, however, you can also choose to follow them so that you stay up to date with their research.
Library
Going back to the burger menu (orange box), you can access your library of saved articles there. The star under an article allows you to save it to your library, which can be very useful if that article is particularly important to your research or you’re wanting to wait to read it later.
Alerts
And finally, you can set up alerts by accessing the burger menu once again. This will make it so that Google Scholar will email you if someone writes about a particular topic. Again, very helpful for staying up-to-date with what’s happening in your field.
There are no doubt many more tips and tricks associated with Google Scholar, but these are the ones I’ve gathered so far. I’d love to hear about any other advice for making Google Scholar work effectively. Otherwise, I hope these help with your research and supporting our writers!
Writing Together / 'Sgwennu gyda'n Gilydd 