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Ask Your Librarians - Greensburg Campus

About Google Scholar

What is Google Scholar? 
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.

Features of Google Scholar

  • Search diverse sources from one convenient place
  • Find articles, theses, books, abstracts or court opinions
  • Locate the complete document through your library or on the web
  • Learn about key scholarly literature in any area of research

Scholar Search

Google Scholar Search

Library Links in Google Scholar

Google Scholar offers a feature called "library links" that will link to articles in journals and databases that the Library has a subscription to. These links automatically appear if you are accessing them from on campus. After performing a search, if an article is available from the ULS, you will see a link that says "Full-Text @ Pitt." Click on the link and you'll be taken directly into the database. This works for book reviews, too.

If you are off campus, here are a couple of options to access this feature:

1. Access Google Scholar from the Databases A-Z list, instead of going directly to Google Scholar.

or 2. If you are signed into your Google account, go to Google Scholar, choose Settings in the menu on the upper left corner of the page, and select Library Links. Search for University of Pittsburgh and select the PItt options. One has already been selected in the screen capture below.

screenshot of google scholar library links page

Search Results

Results from a Google Scholar search yield a variety of scholarly sources consisting of:

  • journal articles
  • books
  • technical reports
  • legal cases
  • grey materials
  • patents
  • pre-prints
  • other kinds of scholarly documents.

Rankings are listed according to what Google considers to be the most relevant listing.

Items with links to full-text materials held by Pitt will show the “Full-Text@ Pitt” display.

Cited: Number of times an item has been citied and links to articles that cite the work.

Related articles: Articles that are related in theme.

Sorting: Available by relevance or by date.