a guide to the academic research database

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Google Scholar is a searchable database of academic literature. Connect users with studies and journal articles on almost any topic of interest. Not all articles are free, you may need a subscription to read the full versions. Visit the Insider Technical Reference Library for more stories.

Founded in 2004, Google Scholar is a massive academic literature database that allows users to access information, cross-reference it with other sources, and keep up with new research as it comes out.

Using Google Scholar, you can access these types of sources:

Journals Texts and dissertations Abstracts Technical reports

Here’s everything you need to know about the powerful search tool.

How to use Google Scholar

Anyone can access the search database. And while it’s built with undergraduate or graduate students and other academics in mind to help those who write academic articles create bibliographies more easily, anyone can benefit from it.

On the Google Scholar home page, you can search for “Articles” or “Law”. Grace Eliza Goodwin / Insider

Here are some examples of what you can do with Google Scholar:

Create alerts. You can create a research library on a topic of interest, such as global warming, and create alerts for it so you are always up to date on the latest research. Explore related jobs. You can gain deeper knowledge on a complicated topic that interests you, such as studies in the field of astronomy, by exploring related citations, authors, and publications. See the References section. Accessing the References section of an article can help you broaden your search to see which sources an author used for their article. Save articles to your library. Saving your searches to your Google Scholar library helps you organize and track your favorite results. Export of citations. You can export the complete citation of an article in the format you prefer using the “Bibliography Manager” section. Access to information

Google Scholar is free as a research tool. However, as it pulls information from many other databases, some of the results may require an access (or even a payment) to access the complete information.

Quick Tip: Whether an article is free depends on a variety of factors such as publication and funding agency mandates. Go to the Public Access section of the Google Scholar profile to view its mandates if a free version is available, you will see an HTML or PDF link on the right hand side.

However, descriptions or abstracts are typically free and provide an overview of what is contained within the article.

Articles and books that are not free will still provide an abstract or description. Grace Eliza Goodwin / Insider Search Tips and Best Practices

You can sort by date on the left side of the page. Will Fischer / Insider

Sort your searches by date (or specify a start date) to find the most recent and relevant data. Search the keywords “all versions”, “related articles” and “quoted by” to include free versions of articles in your search results; you should look for PDFs and library posts. Consult article references to gain a deeper understanding of a topic.

Overall, Google Scholar provides an excellent avenue for academic research, and while it has its drawbacks, it is a tool that can be used to help clarify, explore, and inform users on a wide variety of topics.

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