About Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a search engine that provides links to full-text articles to which the Lehigh University Libraries subscribes or to articles made freely available by the publisher. Scholar also provides articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and scholarly articles posted on the Internet. In addition, many articles are available when Lehigh University has a subscription which would work with EZ Proxy. Finally, Scholar provides citations along with abstracts of the article if it is protected by copyright.
Pros of Scholar
- Ease of use; similar features of Google web search
- Search by cited feature
- Ranking of results
- Citation information provided
- Search vast array of information; technical reports, preprints, societal publications
- Full-text if available
Cons of Scholar
- Full-text not available or restriction access without a subscription
- Must search ASA if off campus for subscription
- Uneven coverage in social sciences, better for hard sciences
- No limiter for just scholarly publications
- Few options to limit or narrow search results
Business Data Librarian
Reuse of Content
A special thanks to my former colleagues at the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh, who graciously granted permission to use much of the content for this guide.