Include alternative terms by using the OR operator.

Otherwise, Google (Scholar) automatically combines multiple words with the operator AND.

Use double quotation marks to search for multiple words next to each other in the specified order (like in compound terms or an exact phrase), e.g., “climate change” or “the impact of climate change on food security”.

These options won’t work optimally (see above), but it can help to limit the number of results.

Use the Advanced search option (in the menu) to search in specific ‘fields’ or to limit results by year range.

Note that most of these tips also work in Google! Here, choose Library links and add Wageningen University & Research Library to the list.įor more information about access to licensed sources off-campus, go to How to access licensed sources directly. If you don’t see a ‘Get It from WUR’ link next to your search results, go to Settings in the menu on the top of the page. When you work from the Google Scholar website, make sure that it makes a link to WUR Library to give you easy access to the licensed sources. If you use Google Scholar from the WUR Library website, you automatically get access to the sources that are part of the WUR collections, if you are on campus. Find out here how to choose the best databases for your subject. To get an overview of scientific literature on a certain topic, therefore, it’s better to use a bibliographic database.

The ranking depends on settings that you may be unaware of, such as your language settings or location. It ranks the search results and shows only the first 1,000 results of any search, based on algorithms that Google changes frequently.

The selection that Google Scholar makes for you is not transparent. title, abstract and keywords fields only (as in Scopus). Advanced searching allows you to limit your search to specific fields (title, author, a particular journal and date), but you can’t limit your search to e.g. By default, Google Scholar searches in the full text of publications. This is because Google Scholar offers limited options to combine multiple search terms with Boolean operators (like AND, OR, NOT). Google Scholar is less useful when you want to get an overview of literature on a certain topic, e.g., for your thesis or literature review. It is especially useful to find and access publications that you already know, or to do a quick search on a topic. Google Scholar is a very powerful search engine for scientific literature that is used by many researchers and students.

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