PSY 212 Research Methods in Behavioral Sciences: Google Scholar

When using Google Scholar, it is helpful to keep these questions in mind:

• What features does it have to help me get relevant results?
• What does this tool do well?
• What does it do poorly?

As a research tool, Google Scholar is good for many tasks, and not as good for others. When deciding whether to use Google Scholar or one of the Library's subscription databases, please keep the following in mind:

Google Scholar is good for...

• Helping a beginning researcher identify journal titles and authors connected with subjects of interest.
• It includes many articles that wouldn't get included in other indexing services.
• Locating obscure references that are proving difficult to find in conventional databases.
• Accessing books and articles in a single search.
• Locating more information on partial citations.

Google Scholar cannot...

• Sort/search by disciplinary field
• Browse by title
• Limit search results

Keep in Mind:

• You may get a long list of results, but you will only have access to the text of articles that the NSCC Library has paid subscriptions for, or that are freely available.
• Not everything in Google Scholar is scholarly. Google Scholar searches academic websites (.edu) as well as journals and publisher websites. 
• It is difficult to determine with what Google Scholar indexes. It is up to the researcher to judge if the source is good for them. 
• Searching in Google Scholar is imprecise when compared with discipline-specific databases.

(from University of Illinois)

In order to access Google Scholar and see which of the articles NSCC has, you need to:

•  Sign into your gmail.northshore.edu account.
• Go to scholar.google.com, you should see your email in the upper right hand corner.
• Select "Settings" at the top of the page.

• On the left hand side of the page select "Library Links"
• In the box under "Show library access links for" type in North Shore Community College and then click the button with the magnifying glass.
• "North Shore Community College - Full Text @ NSCC Library" and "North Shore Community College, Danvers -Cengage Full Text" will appear, make sure both boxes are checked. 
• Click "Save" and start searching!

• If it says "Full Text @ NSCC Library" click that link and it will direct you to the article in one of our databases
• If it says " [HTML] or "[PDF]" the site that it directs you to may ask for a payment to view the article. 

Did you find an article you would like to use for your research, but we don't have full text access?

You may request the book be sent to you via our InterLibrary Loan Service.

How to submit a request:

1. Check to make sure the journal and the full text article is not available through another NSCC database. Search Full-Text Finder.

If you locate the full text article, click on the full-text access button to open and read the article. 

2. If the full-text article is not available, fill out the InterLibrary Loan Article Request form.