PSCB90 Physical Sciences Research Experience

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 log in 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 scholarly search tools for free like Web of Science, Scopus, etc.

To find SPECIFIC articles, you can use Google Scholar instead of Article Finder : simply enter, in quotation marks, the title of the article you wish to find and click search.

Searching Google Scholar

1. Use OR to connect similar terms, as you would in any database. Putting words in quotation marks forces Google to search those words as a phrase. In this example, we are searching ipod "hearing loss" and "mp3 player" "hearing loss" at the same time.
2. Use this bar to control the kinds of results you get: format (articles, legal opinions), date (all dates or since a specific year), and create an email alert of your search terms (get emails whenever new articles are added to Google Scholar).
3. 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.
4. "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.

Google Scholar 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:

How To Get Your Journal Articles Free From Google Scholar

If you are on campus, Google Scholar will automatically configure itself properly. You only need to follow the steps above if you are OFF-CAMPUS.

The University of Toronto Libraries have licensed thousands of online journals so that you can use them for free as a member of the UofT community. To let Google Scholar know that you are a member of the UofT community:

1. Go to Google Scholar (scholar.google.ca)
2. From the menu icon at the top left side of the screen, select the Settings (gear symbol)
3. Under Library Links, type University of Toronto
4. Click Find Library
5. Click the box, University of Toronto Libraries - Get It! U of Toronto
6. Click Save Preferences
7. You will now see Get it! UTL next to each Google Scholar search result.