Criminology: Google Scholar

Google Scholar can be a great resource, sometimes locating everything from journal articles, theses and dissertations, books, conference papers and other research material from a variety of sources including academic publishers, professional societies, institutional repositories and databases. That said, there are reasons to use Google Scholar and reasons not to.

Google Scholar's strengths:

• Very useful when searching for "Grey Literature" such as conference proceedings
• Enables interdisciplinary searches, which can be tricky using only single databases
• Accesses multiples types of documents at once (articles, books, conference proceedings)
• Helps identify who is publishing in particular areas of research
• Results are ranked by relevancy

Things to be aware of when using Google Scholar:

• Content is not always scholarly or peer-reviewed, the way content in the Monash Library databases usually is
• It may be difficult to perform a specific search with precise results
• There are gaps in Google Scholar's coverage, because a lot of information is not freely available on the web
• Citations can be incomplete, and can only be exported one at a time

Some useful links when using Google Scholar:

Using EndNote with Google Scholar?

Go to 'Settings' in Google Scholar , then Search results and select EndNote in the 'Bibliography Manager' section to create links to export citations into EndNote. 

Note: Citations can sometimes be inaccurate! Please check them carefully.

Google Scholar

at Monash Library

The best place to access Google Scholar is from the Monash Library databases page, or via the above link.

Using this link provides access to many articles you find on Google Scholar by connecting you to the Monash Library databases. If you simply navigate to Google Scholar on your own, you will not be able to access this full-text material.

Unlike normal Google, which searches a broad range of information, Google Scholar uses the Google search engine to search just for scholarly and academic information. This can be information might be produced by academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organisations, such as:

• peer-reviewed papers
• theses
• books
• abstracts
• articles

IMPORTANT: 

In order to read a potential full text link, you will need to click on the links that appear to the right in the Google Scholar results list.

Remember: Google Scholar is a useful supplement to database research, but you should use the Monash Library databases to search for the majority of high quality information, especially information that will form the basis of your research.

The Library's databases provide access to more comprehensive, authoritative and up-to-date information, and enable users to include better limits on searches for more precise results.

Google Scholar allows you to set Google Scholar preferences to link to the full text of articles cited in Google Scholar which are available from Monash University Library. Follow these steps to ensure full text links show in your search results

On Campus access
When you search on campus, Google Scholar will automatically recognise your location, and display the Check for full text link to library materials

Off Campus access
If you are off campus you will need to tell Google to link to resources available from Monash University Library. Choose one of the following options to access these full text links:

Option 1:
Always connect to Google Scholar from the library's databases page

Option 2:

• Go to Google Scholar settings 
• Select  Library Links from the left
• Tick the checkbox for Monash University -check for full text
• Click Save 
•  

Search results display

• Check for full text links are either next to a title or below the title.  The full text may or may not  not be available electronically.