CHMC31 Intermediate Inorganic Chemistry

Transcript (PDF)

Google and Google Scholar are both powerful and common search tools so why would you want to use a scholarly search tool/database instead of Google?

There are many reasons, but here are some important ones:

• Google doesn’t index everything - and pages that Google hasn't indexed won't show up in your search (the deep web)

  • Anything hidden behind a login may not be indexed

  • Website designers and programmers can put a "search engines keep out" sign in the site's computer code

  • Many PDFs can't be read (or at least not read correctly) by the indexing tool

• Scholarly search engines index scholarly content - even using Google Scholar you will sometimes get non-scholarly content

• Greater ability to narrow down you search.  You can narrow Google searches down somewhat using Advanced Search or Google Scholar, but the ability to narrow down content is much, much greater in scholarly search engines.

• Chemical structure searching. If you are searching for a chemical structure then there are tools to search using something other than an image search.

• As a member of the University of Toronto community you can use other powerful scholarly search tools for free like Web of Science, Scopus, etc.

To find SPECIFIC articles in Google Scholar: simply enter the title of the article in quotation marks and click search.

Search Tips

• Use Boolean operators (AND, OR) as you would in any database. Putting words in quotation marks forces Google to search those words as a phrase. 
• Use this filters on the left of the screen to control the results you get and create an email alert of your search terms (get emails whenever new articles are added to Google Scholar).
• Different versions of the result are grouped together under "All # versions". Check these if you can’t retrieve the full text – sometimes there will be an alternative access to the full text.
• "Cited by #" links to other results, in Google Scholar, that have cited this result. This can offer a starting point to finding other relevant literature on your topic. Also use Related Articles as a link to further similar research.

Advanced Search

The advanced search in Google Scholar will allow you to narrow down your search in a number of ways.  To use the Advanced Search option go to the menu at the top left of your screen. 

The following options are available:

The University of Toronto Libraries have subscriptions to thousands of online journals so that you can use them for free as a member of the UofT community. To access configure your Google Scholar settings to access full text to articles:

1. Go to Google Scholar (scholar.google.ca) 
2. From the menu icon at the top left side of the screen, select the "Settings" link (gear symbol)
3. Select "Library links" from the menu then type "University of Toronto" into the search box and select the magnifying glass search button
4. Select the box "University of Toronto Libraries - Get full text" from the list of results below the search bow
5. Click "Save"
6. You will now see a "Get full text" link next to your Google Scholar search results.