Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a free online academic database that indexes scholarly literature across disciplines and sources. It allows users to search for peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions.
academic
research
literature-search
citation-management
Google Scholar: Free Online Academic Database
A free online academic database indexing scholarly literature across disciplines and sources, allowing users to search for peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions.
What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar is a free online academic database that indexes scholarly literature from a wide variety of sources. It includes peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions. Researchers can use Google Scholar to find academic literature across most scientific and scholarly disciplines.
Some key features of Google Scholar include:
- Search across many disciplines and sources including articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions
- Find papers from academic publishers, professional societies, universities, and other websites
- See citation counts and links to citing papers to gauge impact
- Access full text where available or find at local libraries
- Set up alerts for new results on specified topics
- Export citations to reference managers like EndNote and RefWorks
Google Scholar helps researchers by making the extensive body of global academic literature more accessible in one place. Its broad and multidisciplinary coverage allows users to search thousands of sources quickly and easily.
Google Scholar Features
Features
- Search engine for academic literature
- Indexes articles, theses, books, abstracts, court opinions
- Covers many disciplines and sources
- Shows citations and versions of each paper
- Related articles and cited by features
- Author profile pages
- Saves searches and sends alerts
- Metrics like h-index and i10-index
- Integrates with Google for full text access
Pricing
- Free
Pros
Free to use
Comprehensive coverage
Good for interdisciplinary research
Shows impact with citation metrics
Easy to use and integrate with Google
Helps find related research
Cons
Not all sources are indexed
Does not include unpublished papers
Ranking algorithm lacks transparency
Too much irrelevant content in results
Limited advanced search options
No full text access
Official Links
The Best Google Scholar Alternatives
Top Education & Reference and Research Tools and other similar apps like Google Scholar
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