Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Good News

  • Quick and easy way to find some scholarly articles.
  • Can access many library resources through GS searches.
  • Can actually find books held by York libraries.

Not So Good News

  • Google Scholar’s Beta release status means some functionality is not there yet:
    • Relevancy ranking in GS skews very heavily to giving quite old results on the first few pages.
    • Can’t sort results by date or limit to very new additions to the index database.
    • Google Scholar doesn’t regularly update its index database, so new information won’t be there.
    • Google Scholar doesn’t let us know what publishers it covers, so it may be missing important articles in many subjects.
  • Humanities and social sciences are not that well covered.
  • You may be asked to pay for articles you can get for free via the library.

Alternatives?

The Libraries licenses scholarly full text resouces in every discipline!

From Google Scholar to Online Full-Text

  1. Go to Google Scholar.
  2. Select “Scholar Preferences”.
  3. In the Library Links box, enter york university and click the Find Libraries button.
  4. Check the box beside York University Libraries, CA - (Find It @ York (online)
  5. Click the Save Preferences button at the bottom of the page.
  6. Follow the Find It @ York (Online) links to access available full-text.

Google Scholar RefWorks Support

It is possible to export records from Google Scholar into your RefWorks database. However, this export currently works only when you are on-campus. If off-campus, you will be directed to the U.S. RefWorks server and will not be able to log in. To set up the export to RefWorks feature in Google Scholar:

  1. Select Scholar Preferences from the Google Scholar homepage.
  2. In the Bibliography Manager section of the Preferences page, select the “Show links to import citations into…” radio button and select RefWorks from the drop-down menu.
  3. Save the changes.
  4. An “Import into RefWorks” link should appear in each citation in your Google Scholar search results.

NOTE: Google Scholar does not do a good job of parsing the citation data (e.g., authors, titles, source, etc.). As a result, always check the imported citation in RefWorks to ensure that the data was properly imported. It may require some editing.

For more information about RefWorks, see the RefWorks help pages. For assistance, please e-mail refworks@yorku.ca.