How Scholarly Is Google Scholar? A Comparison to Library Databases

Use of Google Scholar in corpus-driven EAP research

“…The depth a breadth of the GS index have been carefully scrutinised (Neuhaus, Neuhaus, & Asher, 2006) and the usefulness as well as the drawbacks of GS as an academic search engine have been widely discussed (Howland, Howell, Wright, & Dickson, 2009;Howland, Wright, Boughan, & Roberts, 2009;Jacsó, 2008;Mayr & Walter, 2007). To the best of my knowledge, however, no published linguistic research papers using GS have yet appeared, although I proposed its use as a teaching tool elsewhere (Brezina, 2012).…”

Open access and sources of full-text articles in Google Scholar in different subject fields

“…Besides its comprehensive coverage (de Winter et al 2014;Harzing 2014), one reason for its use is that it helps users find full-text of items (Lercher 2008). Studies also show that compared to the Internet and library databases, GS search results are as good as or better than library databases (Haya et al 2007;Howland et al 2009). GS lists all versions of an item it finds in different locations including repositories, academic and publisher websites.…”

Library metrics – studying academic users’ information retrieval behavior: A case study of an Israeli university library

“…The literature discusses Google Scholar as an entry-level research tool that introduces patrons to the rich resources available at the library (Jacsó, 2005;Rochkind, 2007;Wenzler, 2008). However, some of the studies suggest that the simple search used in the Google Scholar interface, inaccurate metadata, lack of usage statistics, and inconsistent coverage across disciplines will lead patrons to use more sophisticated and expert databases to answer their information needs (Asher et al, 2013;Howland et al, 2009;Noe, 2012;Pomerantz, 2013;Wenzler, 2008).…”

“…Some studies point out that Google Scholar can be an alternative to more expensive databases and that its advantages include free access and basic interface (Colon-Aguirre et al, 2011, Neuhaus et al Asher, 2008. Others claim that the algorithms Google Scholar uses to return result sets cannot really be compared to library database algorithms (Howland et al, 2009); however, the more publishers share their content with Google Scholar, the more the effectiveness of the search increases. Due to the fact that library patrons can use the library's subscription to the digital archives of publishers through Google Scholar (Jacsó, 2005), they are becoming more efficient in their information searches.…”