Google Scholar is a search engine designed to find academic literature from across a wide range of disciplines.

It will find journal articles, theses, books, book chapters, conference papers and other materials. It searches academic publishers, online repositories, universities and other websites. It includes both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed material.

It is best to use Google Scholar along with library databases from the RCN library.

Google Scholar is easy to use. It can be effective for:

• initial scoping searches, to see if there is literature on a topic before undertaking a library database search
• citation searching; this is explained in the section below
• checking for material from other disciplines. Google Scholar contains literature from across most academic subject areas. 

It is helpful to be aware of the limitations of Google Scholar.

• The results are not comprehensive. Using library databases will find content that is not available in Google Scholar.
• It will find large numbers of results, and many of them will be irrelevant.
• You can’t use it in the same way as library databases for structured literature searches. For example, it is not possible to build a search strategy with several lines, or to save your search strategy. The options for exporting results are limited.
• It includes sources that are not peer reviewed and it is not possible to filter them out from your results, as you can with a library database. 
• It is not possible to reproduce (replicate) Google Scholar searches. If someone else does the same search, they will get different results. This makes it less useful in research than library databases.
• Some universities do not permit its use in assessed literature searches or reviews. 

We recommend that RCN members set Google Scholar to show RCN library content. This means you'll quickly see where you can get full text journal articles as part of your RCN membership. See how with our video, or follow the instructions below.

• Go to Google Scholar.
• Open the side drawer at the top left of the page by clicking on the three horizontal lines.
• Select ‘Settings.’
• Select 'Library Links.'
• Type ‘Royal College of Nursing' in the search box and click the 'Search' button.
• Tick the check boxes next to:

ROYAL COLLEGE OF NURSING - ProQuest Fulltext

Royal College of Nursing Library & Heritage Centre - RCN Library

• Click on 'Save.' 

 

• Search using keywords rather than full sentences.
• Group phrases together using quotation marks e.g.

"infection prevention"

• Combine multiple search terms with AND. This will search for results containing all the terms you enter e.g.

“infection prevention” AND gloves

Google Scholar automatically combines multiple search terms with AND. It isn’t essential to use AND in your search, but it is good practice when literature searching. 

• OR will search for alternative terms e.g.

gloves OR “personal protective equipment” OR PPE

• After you have searched, use the options in the left sidebar to limit the results, for example by date.

Find out more with our video.

These techniques may help you to improve your Google Scholar search.

• Search for for your topic more than once, using a different combination of keywords. You may find may find better results.
• Try the ‘Advanced search’ option. It can be used, for example, to specify that search results must contain specific words or that words must occur in the title.  Open the side drawer (at the top left), then pick ‘Advanced Search’. 
• Searching for material from the UK? Try adding a country as a search term. This is not entirely accurate but may help you to find more relevant results. You could search for the UK or its countries in different ways e.g.:
  
  “infection prevention” AND gloves AND UK
  “infection prevention” AND gloves AND “United Kingdom”
  “infection prevention” AND gloves AND Scotland

Library databases such as CINAHL are more effective for searching by location.

Citation searching is a way to find relevant research by looking at who has referenced (cited) an article since it was published. 

If you have the details of a relevant paper, a citation search can help you to identify other more up to date papers. To carry out a citation search in Google Scholar:

• Search for the paper you have identified. 
• Look for the ‘Cited by’ link in the relevant search result. The number indicates how many citing papers Google Scholar has found. 
• Click on ‘Cited by’ to see details of those papers.
• If Google Scholar does not find any citing papers, the ‘Cited by’ link won’t be shown. 

Find out more with our video.

Your search may retrieve a very large number of results, and many of them will be irrelevant.   They are organised by relevance; the more relevant results should be nearer to the top of the list. 

How many you will look through will depend on the scale of your research, and the relevance of the results.

Results include links to full text from:

• the RCN Library, if you have set Google Scholar to show RCN library content (as explained above)
• open access sources, e.g. university repositories, PubMed Central
• publisher websites: sometimes these will only show you the abstract. 

Not everything will be available: contact the RCN library if you would like to get hold of a document that you can’t access.

Use the ‘Cite’ button beneath an item to generate references in several styles, including Harvard and APA. You may need to edit these references to match your citation style accurately.

Find out more with our video.

Google Scholar does not allow you to save or email your search strategy and results in the same way as a library database. If you need to document your search you may wish to take a screenshot. It can also be helpful to make a record of: 

• the date of your search
• your search strategy, including search terms and any limits you applied e.g. date
• the number of search results
• how many results you looked through; ten results are shown on a page unless you change the settings
• how many of the results were relevant
• references to the relevant items. 

Google Scholar offers features that may be useful if you are a researcher or academic author.

• Set up a profile to keep track of your academic publications, including citation metrics. The profile can be public or private. Find out more with this Google Scholar help page.
• Set up alerts for new papers on a topic, or if your academic papers are cited. Find out more with this Google Scholar help page.   
• Export results to reference management software using the Zotero browser extension. This will export results a page at a time.  Export options are more limited than on a library database; advice is available on this Google Scholar help page.
• Use ‘My Library’ to save papers of interest to a personal collection, organise them using tags, and export them to reference management software. Find out more with this Google Scholar help page.

You can learn more about Google Scholar by exploring its help pages.

If you would like to learn about searching library databases, our ‘literature searching and training’ page include videos and guides. RCN members can also book training sessions with us.