Google Scholar

Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries

GOAL: To better understand how Google Scholar works and how it can be used for research.

Tonight

• What is a scholarly source
• How does Google Scholar search?
• Searching Google Scholar
• Google Scholar and Metrics

How do you know that a source is "scholarly?"

Scholarly Source:
Peer-reviewed journal articles are written by scholars or professionals who are experts in their fields and the articles are reviewed by other experts in said field.

Also, a book written by a scholar, and reviewed by other scholars before publication.

What are some examples of scholarly sources that you know of, or have used for classes or your research?

How Google Scholar Works

Besides scholarly sources, what else does Google Scholar have?

Types of Sources

• articles and books
• citations and abstracts
• technical reports
• court opinions
• patents

Rankings

Ranks the same way Google does with an additional algorithm for "scholarly" sources

Basis for Ranking

• Full Text of the article
• The Author
• The Publication
• # of times Cited

Things to Consider

• Articles appear more than once
• Ranking of articles may change overnight
• Relevancy rankings can not be resorted by date

Searching Google Scholar

Let's Search!

• Try a search in Google Scholar
• Return to Adobe Connect, use the Agree button to let us know that you are done.

Automatic Searching:
Results are ranked by relevance

New Articles

• Since Year: re-sorts articles chronologically and by relevance
• Sort By Date: re-sorts by newest only

Filter your search

• Sort by Year
• Sort by Date
• What was different?

Tip: Saving a Search

Link the Library

• Settings
• Library Links
• Search for: Johns Hopkins
• Add Library
• Look for FindIt@JHU

Tip: Similar Results

Advanced Search: Search by...

• Boolean Operator equivalents
• Author
• Publication
• Date

Try It

• Link the library
• Look at similar results and cited by features
• Conduct an Advanced Search
• Use the Agree button in Adobe to let u know when you're done.

Metrics

You can browse the top 100 publications ordered by their five-year h-index and
h-median metrics

H5-Index: It is the largest number h such that h articles published in 2013-2017 have at least h citations each.

I.E.
A publication with 3 articles cited 20,16, 8, and 6 times respectively has an h-index of 6

Things to note:

• Metrics covers articles from 2010 to 2015 inclusive
• Metrics are based on citations from June 2015
• Metrics only include publications with 100 or more articles

H5-Median

Browse Metrics

• First locate your subject in the Metrics Categories
• Find the top publication
• Find your publication's H5-index
• Enter the name of the publication and the H5-index in the poll.

Metrics

Metrics

• Take all metrics with some salt
• Not all metrics are created equal
• No single metric can give you an accurate assessment of a single source/author/journal/etc

GOAL: To better understand how Google Scholar works and how it can be used for research.

Google Guide

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