Library Transcripts

Transcript Title: Understanding Google Scholar Results

URL: https://youtu.be/0yhiM3_Dnog

Begin Transcript

Visual: Google Scholar search results screen for search Homeland Security Airport

Narration: Every Google Scholar result contains important information about the resource. For most items you will see the title of the item at the top of the result. This will usually link to a webpage with more information about the item. Often it will take you to the item record on the publisher’s website, which may ask for payment. It very rarely takes you to full text.

If the item comes in a special format, such as a PDF or book, it’ll also tell you that in the top line.

Below the title you will see the name of the author, followed by the title of the journal or book that the item is published in, the date of publication, and then whatever website  Google Scholar is taking the information from. 

Below this information you see a brief excerpt from the item in question. It will  include your search keywords, and those  will be in bold. To the right you’ll see links to the full text, if Google Scholar is able to access full text. 

In this case, this item is available as a PDF. If you link Google Scholar to the Walden Library, and Walden Library has access to this particular item, you will see a Find at Walden link as well, and you will be able to access the item in the Walden Library.

Finally, in the bottom row of each result, you’ll see the “cited by” link. That is the number of items that Google Scholar knows about that cite this particular item somewhere in the bibliography or in the text.

So, for example, this item is cited by 144 other items. The older and the more influential an item is, the more “cited by’s” you’ll see. If you click the cited by link it will take you to a page listing all of those 144 items.

This was a quick tour of your Google Scholar Results page. 

 

Created [August] [2012] by Walden University Library