Google Scholar searches specifically for scholarly materials such as journal articles, research reports, dissertations and theses, preprints, technical reports, patents, manuscripts in preparation, working papers, and many other document types.
When you do a search in Google Scholar, you get a list of citations. You'll get links to the full text in the following cases:
This is how Google Scholar defines the weighting system:
"Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature." The most relevant results will always appear on the first page. See http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html for more info.
Remember, Google's goal is to make the world of information accessible and useful. It is still up to researchers to critically evaluate research materials.
Google does not search the deep web (aka Deepnet, invisible web or hidden web). These terms refer to World Wide Web content that is not part of the surface Web indexed by search engines. This means that Google Scholar cannot find everything that might be of use to you.
When using Google Scholar, it is helpful to keep these questions in mind:
As a research tool, Google Scholar is good for many tasks, and not as good for others. When deciding whether to use Google Scholar or one of the library's databases, please keep the following in mind:
Google Scholar is good for...
Google Scholar cannot...
Keep in Mind:
Set Google Scholar to search UWF databases and electronic resources.
*Remember that you must be logged in form off-campus to actaully view the full text.