Google Scholar is a useful resource that searches across a wide range of academic literature.  It pulls results from publishers, university research repositories and scholarly websites.

Use it to find the following kinds of material:

  • Academic articles
  • Theses
  • eBooks
  • Abstracts (from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories etc.)

Getting the most out of Google Scholar

When you are searching Google Scholar on-campus, lots of the journal articles etc. that you discover are available to you through Library subscriptions.  This is because we’ve set up full-text access to our resource through Google Scholar within the university IP range. 

We want you to get the most out of Google Scholar when you’re working from home too – so here’s how to configure it to allow access to Abertay Library’s subscriptions wherever you are.

You can also set-up Google Scholar to import citations directly into your favourite reference management tool *Remember, you can use whichever reference management tool you like but we will only offer training and support for RefWorks.

Configure your Settings 

  1. Go to https://scholar.google.co.uk/
  2. Select 'Settings' from the top of the screen
  3. Go to Library Links, search 'Abertay' then select 'View It @ Abertay'
  4. Click the save button to keep your preferences
  5. Under the Search Results section you'll see 'Bibliography Manager'
  6. Under 'Show links to import citations into', select RefWorks from the drop-down meu
  7. Click the save button to keep your preferences
That's it - You can now search Google Scholar from home and see all of our subscribed content in the results and link to the full-text with one click!
 

Evaluate your sources

However, because Google Scholar uses a wide variety of sources, not all results will be high quality or peer-reviewed.  Results may also include unpublished versions of articles and other kinds of sources.  While you may still find useful items, it is very important to evaluate these sources.  Always think about: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy/Reliability and Bias/Purpose.

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