Tips for Using Google Scholar

Google Scholar is fast and easy to use

Pros

No argument here. One search takes seconds to find scholarly journals, books, theses, and reports.

Cons

Simple searches often give you nonspecific or irrelevant results.

Google Scholar doesn’t have many good techniques for making a search really specific.

How to Make it Better

Try some of these tricks to make your Google Scholar search more specific and still keep it easy:

• Use more terms, and more specific terms: instead of just eating disorder, type: eating disorder bulimia binge
• Use quotes for a phrase, and/or a minus sign to eliminate a term: “eating disorder” -anorexia
• Try one of the databases licensed by NCSU Libraries, Academic Search Premier. It is also easy to use and scholarly.

More Tips

Google Scholar finds large sets of scholarly articles

Does Google Scholar cover all the scholarly literature?

Using Google Scholar with NCSU Libraries