Google Scholar is one of the largest global databases for searching academic papers. The service provides an opportunity to familiarize with scientific articles, dissertations, preprints, books and technical reports on a free basis.
The platform is no less popular among the scientific community than the global services Scopus and Web of Science.
Overview of Google Scholar: features and characteristics
Google Scholar is one of the largest and most influential services in the scholarly metrics world. The search engine for scientific publications was founded in 2004 by Google engineers Alex Verstack and Anurag Acharya. Due to the scale of the project and the possibility to use the platform's tools for free, Google Scholar has become an effective way of communication between scientists from all over the world.
Google Scholar is a unique search engine that indexes scientific literature. The service is unofficially considered to be the largest hub of scientific materials, as search robots continuously scan the network and add scientific works. To date, it is impossible to name the exact number of scientific papers stored on the platform. According to the latest data, the search engine covers more than 390 million scientific materials and more than 90% of all English-language articles. In addition, Google Scholar search robots index scholarly research in all languages and in all fields of study.
Key features of Google Scholar:
- The aggregator contains materials in almost all regional languages, so that scientific papers can be read in their original languages
- on the Google Academy platform it is possible to create a CV of the author, which will be useful for future cooperation with both academic and commercial institutions.
- search robots of the service have access to scan scientific materials of the largest university, scientific and commercial publishers.
- 3 main indicators are used to analyze the influence of scientific activity of authors and publishers:
- Citation index - the number of citations of the work in other publications
- Hirsch index - an indicator of the influence of an author or group of authors, scientific publishing house or educational institution, based on the number of publications and their citations
- I10-index - a unique indicator from Google Academy, which is used to dynamically evaluate the publication activity of scientists, scientific organizations or journals.
- the registration process is free, but only available to researchers whose papers are freely available. In other words, to get a Google Scholar ID account, you need to have scientific articles
- you can search for scholarly materials by keywords, journal titles, and authors.
- Google Scholar interface is intuitive and familiar - it is similar to the Google home page
- the service allows you to create personal collections of articles by uniting them with a common tag in the "My Library" section
- the system allows you to quickly generate bibliographic references to any scientific article according to the most frequently used international bibliographic standards.
Main differences between Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science databases
|
Comparative characteristics |
Scopus and Web of Science |
Google Scholar |
|
Payment for using the platform |
subscription is required to access the full version |
all features are available for free |
|
Specifics of creating an author profile |
To obtain a Scopus ID, you need to have at least one indexed article. It is possible to register Researcher ID on WoS even without publications in peer-reviewed journals |
You can register a Google Scholar ID only if you have published scholarly articles online |
|
Scientific indicators |
Scopus: CiteScore, h-Index, SNIP, SJR.
WoS: SCIE, SSCI, AHCI. |
Citation index, h-index, I10-index |
|
Publication language |
English |
All regional languages are available |
|
Specifics of scientific papers placement |
Scopus and Web of Science set strict requirements for all research posted on the platforms. The selection of publications goes through several stages, not all scientific papers are peer-reviewed and indexed. |
Google Scholar passes through all scientific materials posted on the Internet. Unfortunately, sometimes the database includes papers of low quality or not related to scientific research at all. |
|
Company affiliation |
Scopus is a product of the global company Elsevier. Web of Science is a project of Clarivate. |
Google Scholar is one of the products of Google Corporation. |
|
Coverage of scholarly materials |
Only scientific materials indexed by databases |
The entire Internet |
|
Influence in academia |
Scopus and Web of Science are the most prestigious databases in terms of publication placement. Publication in Scopus or WoS contributes to obtaining scientific degrees, career growth opportunities, and increasing the reputation of a scientist. |
The evaluation of Google Scholar is currently ambiguous. Some academic circles question the quality of articles posted in this database. A number of publishers do not allow the service to index their articles. Publications may be indexed on the platform with a delay or may not appear in the system at all. Nevertheless, Elsevier has made most of its ScienceDirect collection available to Google Scholar, which makes the service recognized in the global scientific community. Note that high scientometric indicators of Google Scholar directly affect the career and reputation of scientists and increase the ratings of scientific journals. |
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