Leverage the Power of Google
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a great place to search for articles about your topic. Google Scholar includes scholarly article content, as well as chapters from authoritative books and reports. Google Scholar is a great place to search when you are not having luck in the databases. It is more forgiving, and often can help you find relevant articles important to your research. After finding some articles in Scholar, you can discover how the subject matter is discussed, note key terms and any jargon, and revisit the databases armed with some good information and powerful search terms.
Keep in mind that full text may not always be available from Google Scholar; if you have enough time, articles that do not have accompanying full text may be requested through Interlibrary Loan.
As mentioned earlier in this guide, Google is another place to search for needed information. When searching in Google, it is important to think about what results you find: Who is the author or sponsor, why is the information being published? Is there obvious bias? How authoritative is the source you find?
Google gives you so many results it is difficult to know which ones are useful or reliable. Articles rise to the top of a search based on the number of times they are clicked on; this might not be the best way to choose what will be most important for your search.
Google allows several ways for you to target your results. If you implement some of the following techniques, you will find that you can leverage the power of Google to help you find solid results for your project. Try out some of the tips below.
Get the most out of your Google search
Searching in Google can help you uncover relevant articles for your research. The problem is, how to find results that will be helpful?
SITE Searching
One way to target results in Google is to employ the site search. This requires you use a specific phrase before adding search terms to tell Google you only want results from a specific website or domain. The search always begins with site + colon + URL or Domain all without any spaces; next, add a space and insert your search terms. See the examples below -
- site:nytimes.com 'eating disorders' This search phrase tells Google that you'd like results from the New York Times website that mention eating disorders as a phrase. **This is one of the best ways to search for articles on a given topic in the New York Times** Notice that we put eating disorders in quotes, to ensure that Google looks for the phrase, not the individual words.
- site:gov 'social media' adolescent brain This search phrase tells Google you'd like to see articles, reports, etc., from government websites that include information about social media and the adolescent brain. You could add more terms, if you wanted to narrow or target the search still further.
- site:gov ptsd brain biology This is another search in government websites investigating PTSD and brain biology
- site:edu depression biological basis This search phrase tells Google to retrieve articles published by or in educational institutions about the effect of analytics in professional sports. Note: You could replace professional sports with a particular sport, or college sports, to narrow the results even further.
Other search tips in Google
- Limit the date of your results by inserting the phrase after + colon + year or date without any spaces
- after:2016 'brain damage' neuroplasticity This phrase tells Google that you'd like all your results to have been published after 2016 (note: the after phrase can come before or after your search terms)
- You can also limit your results to a given date range by clicking on Tools under the search bar, and then Any Time under that.
- Search for an exact phrase by putting your terms in quotes when entering them in the search bar, e.g., "hate speech" -- using the quotes will ensure you retrieve results with that exact phrase.
