Social Sciences

Google Scholar

Google Scholar can be great for finding articles, pre-published papers and more, but do check the quality of the sources you've found.  By clicking on the "  (quote marks) at the end of each retrieved record you can export directly to RefWorks.  Go into settings and set the library links to show items held at Solent.  You may be better using the advanced search feature, found under Settings.

Search Tips for Google 

Searching Google to get the best results is not as straight-forward as you may believe.  There are some tips you can use to improve the results.  Look through all the results - the top one might not be the best for your research although Google will try to give you the most relevant one first there are many other factors to be taken into account.  See Google's help pages.

Google Scholar does not allow you to filter to see peer reviewed articles only. You can visit the home page of journal (by googling it) to see if it is peer reviewed.  If the article is available in Solent Library, you could also check there.   A good indicator of quality is the cited by link - the other researchers that have actually used the research in their research.

Google Scholar does show how often an item has been cited (used) by other researchers.  This can be an indicator of quality (although they could all be criticising it!).  In a sense it's a more powerful indicator of value as people have found it useful.  Also bear in mind that the newer the article is the less opportunity it has had to appear in other's research.  You can see the cited articles and  check if they add to your research.

Boolean ( AND, OR, NOT)

AND Google assumes you are connecting your terms with AND (so both words must be present) this is common to most databases/eResources.  Google does not do Boolean, so do not include the word AND or NOT as you would in searches on other eResources or databases.  It does do "OR".

OR  if you use OR it must be in capitals (this is good practice for most databases).  Connecting with OR means that either word needs to present – useful for synonmyns. 

Consider using the Advanced Search function - it will help you get the best results.

Some Google Tips and Tricks

Note the punctuation!

•  Google ranks the first word higher than the second Solent University  returns different results to University Solent
• " "  Searches for phrases "social distancing" searches for the exact phrase
• - excludes words from your search "social distancing" -children  will exclude children from your search
• Site: site:.ac.uk will find educational sites.  Note the punctuation
• * Searches for missing words in a phrase - this is not the same use of a * in other databases where you use it to truncate a word
• ... - use to find a range of numbers 
• Allintext: searches for multiple words in text 
• Allintitle: Limits your search  to words in the title - really useful to narrow done searches
• Define: use to define a word define:biomechanics
• Verbatim:  Use after a search - looks for all the words you have searched for.  Type in your search words, then click Tools, then select Verbatim from the All Results drop down
• Use the date range to narrow results to a time frame.

Watch the video to learn some additional ways of searching Google Scholar