Google and Google Scholar

The answer, is sometimes, but not all the time. You can start your search with Google, but you need to move on to academic resources, that is, material found in textbooks, scholarly and peer reviewed journals.

When is it a good time to Google? 

• When starting an assignment to...
  • define the topic
  • learn about terms and concepts you are unfamiliar with
  • Identify other keywords and related topics that will help you find academic material
• To gather opinion on a topic
• To look at images and video
• To access government or corporate publications that are not available through academic databases

When is a bad time to use Google?

• When you need academic, scholarly resources
• When you need peer reviewed material: Most peer-reviewed material is behind pay walls, meaning Google may not be able to find it and won't be able to provide access to it. To access peer reviewed content, use Library Search on the library homepage or some of our academic databases and other recommended electronic resources, such as EBSCO and ProQuest

Google Scholar allows you to search for academic literature across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities, and other scholarly organizations. 

For this reason, it is best not to rely on Google Scholar as your sole source of academic material. You will get much more relevant results using library research databases.

To access the full text of articles on Google Scholar from subscription journals, add your library memberships to the Library links tab in Settings (see image below).