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Google Scholar: Tips and Tricks

This guide includes some tips and tricks to help make your Google Scholar searching more productive

Instruction and Student Success Librarian

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Abigail Higgins
she/her
Contact:
231 Mell Street
Auburn, AL 36849
334.844.7682
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Tips: Searching

  1. Searching is not case sensitive EXCEPT for the Boolean Operators of AND, OR, and NOT
    • academic OR nonprofit
  2. Use relevant terminology
    • While "wolf" as a search term may work, "canis lupus" will give more precise results
  3. Google Scholar automatically ANDs words together
    • nonprofit centers institutionalization
  4. Double quotations marks can be used for phrases
    • ​​​​​​​"canis lupus"
    • "(academic OR nonprofit) centers" 
  5. The asterisk (*) does not work as a truncation symbol.  Google Scholar uses automatic stemming
    • ​​​​​​​institution can also bring up institutions, institutionalize, institutionalization...
  6. The Advanced Search is under the three parallel lines in the upper right

 

Navigating the Results: Tips

  1. This is one reason why you turned on the libraries in the settings -- direct links to the articles, or the ability to search our article linker.
    • Tip: If there is no article linker use the Cite link (the double quotation symbol) to cut and paste into the libraries' Discovery service, or to search on regular Google.
  2. If the author is underlined, they have a Google Scholar Profile page.
  3. This section lets you save material to My Library, find related articles, and find newer research through the Cited By or Web of Science links