Tips for using Google Scholar at the University of Illinois
Accessing Google Scholar
You may search Google Scholar at:
http://scholar.google.com
If you use Firefox, you may also want to add a search plugin for Google Scholar, so you can
search GS more easily! Here's how:
- The default search engine on the Firefox toolbar is Google. But you can add many other
search engines to the toolbar, and access them via the dropdown list next to the search bar.
To find other search engines, search the
MyCroft Project site. Some popular search
engines to add:
- Google Scholar; Google News; Internet Movie Database (IMDB); Wikipedia; Amazon; UIUC Library
Easy Search; YouTube; Epicurious; etc.
- Once you have located a search engine in MyCroft, just click on it's name and it will be added
to your list of search engines.
- If you've added a lot of search engines to the Firefox toolbar, you may want to put them in a
specific order; do this via the "Manage Search Engines" link, at the bottom of the list of search
engines.
Setting up Preferences in Google Scholar
Be sure to set up your Google Scholar preferences so you have access to the Library's "Discover"
links and can more readily download citations into RefWorks or EndNote.
- From the Google Scholar page,
http://scholar.google.com, click on Scholar Preferences.
- Under "Library Links", search for: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Select all that match. This will cause to appear on every GS entry a link that says either "Discover UIUC Full Text" or "Discover UIUC other svcs". Follow these links to the full text of articles
subscribed to by the U of I Library. Note: if you are on campus, you will see these
links without even selecting this GS preferences option.
- Under "Bibliographic Manager", select the tool you use: RefWorks, EndNote,
etc. Now you'll see a link in each GS record that will allow you to download the basic
citation information into your tool. Note: This only allow you to download the
information that GS has for each article -- so you will not get the abstracts, keywords, etc.
- Be sure to click on "Save Preferences", when you have completed making the
selection on this page that you want.
Searching Google Scholar
Fundamentally, you can search Google Scholar much as you do Google. Be aware that it is
searching a somewhat different universe than Google does, as it searches behind the firewalls of
many, many publisher websites, pdfs, etc. It also searches quality sites such as researcher's
web sites.
Some quick tips for searching Google or Google Scholar:
- Use parentheses to hold phrases together, e.g., "glucose transporter" "brain tumor"
- Normally Google searches for items that contain all the terms in the search box (and AND)
search. To perform an OR search, put OR in caps, e.g., "honey bee" OR honeybee
- If you are interested in articles that speak of a certain topic, but not if they mention
another, put a minus sign directly in front of the undesired term or phrase, e.g., "apis mellifera"
disease -varroa
Use the Advanced Search to Search Google Scholar.
To the right of the GS search box is a link for the Advanced Scholar Search. Besides
faciliating topical search, the Advanced Search allows you to search specifically by author,
publication, publication date range, and more.
Pulling multiple Google Scholar citations into EndNote or RefWorks
Have you ever been frustrated that you can only download one citation at a time from Google
Scholar? If so, then I would recommend that you investigate
Zotero and / or
Publish or Perish (POP). Both of these free (to
academics) tools will help you download selected GS citations into a RIS text file, which you can
them import into RefWorks or EndNote. Please refer the detailed instructions
here.
