Google® Power Tools Bible

Chapter 15. Researching with Google Scholar

<feature><title>In This Chapter</title>

• Learn how Google Scholar ranks search results

• Focus your scholarly search with the Advanced Search

• Understand the Google Scholar search results

• Publishers, have Google Scholar index your publications

• Learn some tips on Internet citation

• Add a Google Scholar Search box on your Web site

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“Stand on the shoulders of giants.” This appears in bold green letters in the middle of the Google Scholar page at http://scholar.google.com. All research is in some way based on the work of others. The Internet, and now specifically Google Scholar, has made accessing the publication of these scientific endeavors simple. Simply searching the Web isn’t always the most efficient way to do scholarly research. So, Google built a special system that provides access to content not available on the Web but instead resides in scholarly publications that have allowed their content to be indexed by Google. Google Scholar is a free service that has been shown to provide citation ability equal to other expensive services.

Searching for Papers or Books

Research is almost never done in a vacuum, unless you’re an astronaut. Good research involves discovering the work of others and comparing it, contrasting it, testing it, and sometimes using it as a foundation for new research.

Scholars use a number of publication types in their research. These include

• Peer-reviewed papers: Papers published in journals that have scientific peers ...