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Skipping a grade: Google reveals 18 lifehacks on using Google Scholar for school and research

By Liu Hongzuo - on 26 Aug 2023, 10:00am

Skipping a grade: Google reveals 18 lifehacks on using Google Scholar for school and research

Note: This article was first published on 15th December 2022 and is updated for relevancy.

Google Scholar shares tips on how students and researchers can use it more effectively. Image: Google.

Google Scholar, a search-and-view service for peer-reviewed journals and articles, recently uploaded many tips on using the tool more effectively. How effective? It can potentially trivialise the time spent on writing papers, making it easier for undergrads and researchers to meet that pesky deadline.

There are 18 tips on helping you to attain (and even write about) the papers you need to complete your assignment, but we’ve picked a few from the list that are easy to use in a pinch. If you want to see the full list, it’s here.

Google Scholar lets you get your article citations in a housestyle of your choice, be it APA, MLA, or Chicago. It’s found at the bottom of each entry. Selecting and copying the citation is a matter of just pressing a button.

Example of starting big on a topic before going deeper. Image: Google.

For better-quality research, Google recommends “starting big” before narrowing down to your specific topic when using its Google Scholar search bar. The example given was (unfortunately) cancer, before moving on to specific types of cancer. This not only grants you better search results but also triggers Google’s search algorithms to serve up related articles without you having to describe what you need. All that is before you even reach for the “Advanced Search” tool.

Google Scholar also added that URLs marked with PDF or HTML are more likely to be free-to-read, versus many papers that are locked behind subscriptions.

If you’re unsure about a paper’s legitimacy, there are several ways to cross-check. Google Scholar has author profiles uploaded, and prominent authors or topic experts would also have other past and current research papers uploaded under their names. Another way is to check where the papers were cited before via “how cited” found below every entry – super effective for legal practitioners and students alike.

If you’re a researcher, you can even sign up for Google Scholar alerts on a topic, save it to your customised and fully-labelled library, and share it with your colleagues.

Source: Google (blog)

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