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Cornell-Hunter Health Equity Research Fellowship : Google Scholar

Resources for Cornell-Hunter Health Equity Research Fellows

On this page

  • Google Scholar vs. PubMed
  • Using Google Scholar
  • Exporting from Google Scholar
  • Google Scholar practice activity

Google Scholar vs. PubMed

PubMed is primarily used to search MEDLINE. MEDLINE is a relatively selective database, indexing over 30 million journal articles in 5,200 biomedical journals. 

Google Scholar (GS) has broader coverage. It can be used to find meeting abstracts and other publication types, not just journal articles. A much larger number of journals can be found in GS than in MEDLINE, as well as a much broader range of disciplines, not just biomedical. GS is useful for supplementing your PubMed search with a broader, interdisciplinary search. 

The links below provide more detail on the coverage of each database. 

Using Google Scholar

Here's an example Google Scholar search syntax for a search for articles about patient awareness of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act:

patient awareness "physician payments sunshine act" OR "open payments"

You can use Advanced Search (in the menu in the upper right) if you need help using the appropriate combination of Boolean operators (AND, OR).

An example of a longer, more complex search:

physician|doctor|doctors "industry payments|relationships"|conflict-of-interest|“open payments”|“physician payments sunshine act” patients  attitude|awareness|disclosure|experience|knowledge|opinions| perception|satisfaction|trust|worry|view 

Google Scholar searches are limited to the first 256 characters (including spaces). You can use | instead of OR to reduce the number of characters you need to use. 

Exporting from Google Scholar

Google Scholar practice activity

Search Google Scholar for articles about COVID-19 racial and/or ethnic disparities in New York City. Try using Boolean operators, phrase search, and truncation.