Analyzing the Results

Search results in Google Scholar are a bit different from those you may be used to seeing on a Google Web search. Rather than presenting you with a link to a specific Web page, as you might expect from a Google Web Search, each Google Scholar result represents a body of work on a specific topic. This might be a single article from a book or it might include many related conference articles, journal articles, preprint articles and any other related scholarly material.

Bibliographic data

The results include bibliographic information such as the title of the publication, a list of the authors, and the source of the publication. Because the results do not always represent a single article, but may in fact represent a group of articles, the bibliographic information for the entire group of related articles is included, as well as Google’s best guess at which of the articles best represents the group.

The search results list the number of articles within the group. For example, you may see a link that looks like group of 3 >>.

Clicking the link shows you a list of all three related articles within the group.

Another way to judge the importance of the article is by seeing how many other articles have cited the article in the result you are viewing. Google Scholar lists the number of citations in the result, shown as a link. Clicking the link displays a list of all the articles citing the original article.

Books

The search results may include links to books, as shown in Figure 15.3. Each book result is preceded by the word book in brackets, as in [book]. The title of the book is listed with the author, year of publication, and publisher listed in green below the book title. Google Scholar links to citations to the book in other articles and related articles.

Figure 15.3: Book references are labeled with [BOOK].

In addition to citations and related articles, Google Scholar provides Web Search results for the book title, making it easier for you to find a copy of the book. You might even try your search using Google Books (http://books.google.com).

There is one more link provided for books, Library Search. Clicking this link performs a search through the WorldCat online library catalog. One of the nice features of the WorldCat catalog is that you can type your ZIP code and find a copy of the book in a library near you. It also allows you to easily find books by the same author or within the same subject.

British Library Direct

One of the services provided by Google Scholar is a link to British Library Direct, when available. Clicking BL Direct takes you to a British Library page that provides additional bibliographic information and the ability to buy reprints of the article (see Figure 15.4).

Figure 15.4: You can purchase article reprints through the British Library.

British Library Direct is a free service of the British Library that allows you to search through a catalog of 20,000 journals and publications. It is not affiliated with Google, or Google Scholar. When you find the article that you want using the British Library Direct service, you can read them online for free or purchase reprints using your credit card.