Google Scholar (beta or test version)

Google Scholar searches a range of scholarly and other literature, including journal articles, conference papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. There are two ways to access Google Scholar:

  • Google Scholar - public access (http://scholar.google.com)
  • Google Scholar with increased full text access
    • This will identify you as an RMIT user on and off campus and will provide access to some full text which is only available in RMIT University Library databases. Note that it does not cover all the material in our databases. At present it includes full-text from publishers such as ACM, IEEE, Institute of Physics, Springer and Wiley.
    • Always use the library catalogue to search by title for journals that did not link to the full-text through Google Scholar - because there is a lot more in the Library’s collection, databases and e-journals than is currently accessible through Google Scholar.

How good is Google Scholar?

As with any indexing service, you should be aware of both its strengths and weaknesses. There is an article on this subject called Google Scholar - the pros and the cons but here are some main points:

Strengths of Google Scholar:

  • The search interface is straightforward, including an Advanced Search option
  • Search results may include links to full-text articles freely available on the Internet. Many links take you to publishers' websites where access requires a subscriber login or payment. The good news is that many of these will be available to you through our Library databases so you need to check the catalogue.
  • Google Scholar may offer a number of versions of the same article depending on where it was found (the publisher website, the author's website, a pre-print service,etc.). However, always use the library catalogue to search by title for journals that did not link to the full-text through Google Scholar or where you are uncertain which version of an article to use.

Weaknesses of Google Scholar:

  • It is still in beta (or test) version, meaning that there are still many bugs or errors
  • Coverage is predominantly medical, scientific and technical. It is not the best source for social science or humanities topics or Australian material.
  • Google provides no information about which publishers or sites are searched, the extent of the material included and the frequency of updating, while the criteria for identifying an article or site as “scholarly” are still fuzzy
  • There are many errors in the indexing, e.g. authors identified as D Analysis or D Statistics…

Things to remember:

  1. Google Scholar will not provide all the material you need - and there is much more scholarly material available to you as an RMIT student.
  2. Relying on just one source is not usually the best search strategy. If you are serious about your research, you will want to search across all the relevant databases, varying your search strategy and taking advantage of the specialized indexing that databases can offer.
  3. To get the best, use Library databases which have been carefully selected to provide comprehensive, retrospective and up-to-date access to scholarly literature.
  4. If you need help:

Other Web search engines covering academic journals:

    • Scirus – From Elsevier searches over 450 million science-specific Web pages

To sum up:

Google Scholar can be a useful place to start, but you can rely on the Library’s databases as your best source providing extensive coverage of scholarly information.