Google Scholar is nothing but a very precious blessing for people seeking educative information on varied subjects, on the Internet. It (Google Scholar) is a vast database consisting of academic literature penned down by scholars. The purpose of Google Scholar is to provide easy access to the literature encompassing abstracts, journals, books, articles, to name a few. In fact, it’s a platform where people would in no way be hassled in searching for required information.
Google Scholar, which came into existence in the year 2004, keeps itself consistently updated with latest researches, developments, etc. This throws light on the fact that; it is of immense value to seekers of knowledge and especially to students aiming for higher studies. Here, it won’t be inappropriate to have a glimpse of few of the primary advantages of Google Scholar.
- You are enabled to carry out the search for literature, from single location.
- One can rest assured that the details they obtain here are up-to-date.
- On this platform, people are facilitated in keeping track of articles of their preference, in all aspects. To be clearer, you will know about the total number of times users have cited a specific article. Also, you shall be able to identify these users!
- Saving the literature for further reference becomes a simplified thing, courtesy the Scholar (Google).
If you intend to really benefit from Google Scholar, there are some key tips that you must never forget. These are:
- Make sure that you make a mention of dates in the searches. With this, you can rest assured that the details you obtain are the most recent ones.
- Equally important is the point that you include terms like “corresponding articles”, “entire versions”, among others, while searching.
- Do not ignore the references part of a write-up, so that you’ll be able to comprehend a subject in an in-depth way.
At this point, it needs to be admitted that Google Scholar has few shortcomings, as well. Perhaps, the most alarming of those is that, even predatory journals are getting included in search results (of Google Scholar). Now, let us see as to what exactly these journals are.
Predatory journals are classed as literature that gets published, without it having to undergo any sort of editing and review process. It is a rather sad state of affairs that, nowadays; there is no dearth of online publishers encouraging predatory journals. They (publishers) do so, with the sole intention of making money in an easy way! These journals get published almost in a jiffy, while genuine scholastic works consume fair bit of time before appearing on Worldwide Web.
Academicians and intellectuals have been voicing their concerns over appearance of predatory journals in Google Scholar, in the following manner:
- Only commonsense is what that is required to understand that the content of predatory journals is unreliable.
- Medicine & health is an avenue that is getting gravely impacted with these dubious journals, for this is the area where wrong/misleading information could even risk the lives of people!
- Due to the questionable practices of these types of publishers, actual scholars are being deprived of sufficient opportunities to publish their articles, papers, etc
Combating the menace of predatory journals is need of the hour. If this issue is not resolved, it won’t be too long before the very purpose of forming Google Scholar gets destroyed!
