Extended Projects - Information Searching How to search with Google Scholar

Transcription

1 Extended Projects - Information Searching How to search with Google Scholar What this is: o a step-by-step guide to executing a search using the Google Scholar service; o intended for Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence researchers; o an introduction to fairly basic searching; o suitable for guiding you through your first few searches have this in one browser window and the Google Scholar service in another window. What this is not: o a complete guide to every feature of searching Google Scholar. Coverage of Google Scholar Uses web crawler technology. Some publishers refuse to allow their journals to be indexed, notably the American Chemical Society. Google does not publish information about coverage. Studies suggest 90% of scientific literature published in English is covered and a wide range of forms of the literature is covered. Setting the parameters for the search Use the advanced search option: Use Advanced Scholar Search

2 Searching for keywords For most searches, you can specify your search by using one or more of the boxes. This is a search for publications about cats AND dogs NOT rain AND NOT snow. This translates into a Google Scholar query: This search is intended to find papers about the evaluation tests called TREC or NTCIR applied to multilingual information retrieval. This search uses words and phrases from any field (including titles and abstracts). The text boxes are labelled all of this text (and) and any of this text (or). 2 How to search with... Google Scholar P J Hancox 2014

3 The search entered translates into: "multilingual information retrieval" AND (TREC OR NTCIR): The equivalent of: "multilingual information retrieval" OR operator in use Searching in full text Results of the search Limit by date Searching in full text usually gives good recall but poor precision. There are 291 items retrieved: they are shown here sorted (presumably) by the system s view of relevance and in condensed form that is with not very much information about each reference: Click the title to access more information. Link to an online copy. How to search with... Google Scholar P J Hancox

4 Accessing the full text linking to another publisher Google Scholar has a mechanism for linking with the University Library s e-journal collection (providing you are attached to the University s network, e.g. though a VPN). For some publications, you will be directed to a publisher s website. This does not mean that you will automatically be able to see the paper you have found: some publishers charge for access to their papers. (If you find yourself in this situation, follow the procedure described below.) This is a link to a publisher s web site. This particular publisher has an open-access policy Clicking on the title of the item gets you to (in this case) the publisher s document repository. The University has a subscription with this publisher, so you can read the item online. This is the link to a PDF. 4 How to search with... Google Scholar P J Hancox 2014

5 Getting an electronic copy of the results of the search Google Scholar doesn t allow you to download all the reference data to your local machine for you to look through at your leisure. (Most services have this feature.) You can download individual references to your machine. There are several options. In this example, the download format is BibTeX: Click on the Cite link of the item you are interested in: This is the link to the For LaTeX users, find the BibTeX link and click on it: reference data. How to search with... Google Scholar P J Hancox

6 The BibTeX entry can then be copied and pasted into your favourite reference manager (e.g. JabRef). But note: you are responsible for the quality of the data in your reference manager, so you would want to change the journal field to the full name of the journal. Your reviewers will not be impressed if you try to excuse yourself by saying I downloaded the references so I assumed they were correct. 6 How to search with... Google Scholar P J Hancox 2014