Library Guides: Google Scholar: When to use Google Scholar

Benefits of Google Scholar

Benefits of Google Scholar

Positive and negative

Often a useful place to start when you already have an author, article title, good keywords
Searches scholarly articles, scholarly books, conference papers
In some cases, results will show a link to your college or institution. (ex: FullText@Mville) Following that link can give you access to the full text. If the article is not available in full-text, you can borrow the publication through our Interlibrary loan service, Illiad.
Google Scholar links directly to Google Books.
Google Scholar can also offer you a starting point to finding other relevant literature on your topic by:

Google Scholar is valuable when you do not have access to databases with scholarly journals (after you graduate from Manhattanville). You can take the citation (if the article is not fully available on Google Scholar) to your local library and they will order the article for you through interlibrary loan.

Limitations of Google Scholar

Search results may not be current or comprehensive
Searching is less precise than in academic databases
Doesn’t search all scholarly content or journals, the "invisible or deep" web--most are in subscription databases, which is at least 500 times larger than the free web
May not cover older publications, particularly those not published electronically
Many records are available only as summaries, abstracts or pay-for-view
Results ranked by a confidential algorithm which favours frequently-cited references
Bias towards older references (because they have more citations)
Anomalies and errors in listings e.g. citations with missing details, author’s names containing apostrophes, hyphens or accented characters omitted or misspelled