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Conducting an Efficient Literature Search: Google Scholar

This guide is for faculty, residents, and fellows undertaking literature reviews. It covers key sources for literature reviews as well as reference management.

On this page

  • Google Scholar vs. PubMed
  • Using 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

Generally, you can use the same approach to searching in Google Scholar as in Google; for example, the following search would retrieve articles about the spiritual needs of critically ill children:

critically ill children spiritual needs

Here's an example of a longer, more complex search:

child|children|infant|pediatric|neonatal|newborn|newborn|pre-natal "belief in god"|chaplain|"faith in god"|existential|meditation|pastoral|prayer|religion|religious|spiritual|spirituality "critical care"|"critical illness"|"intensive care"|"life support"|nicu||picu|"serious illness"

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. 

Google Scholar practice activity

  1. Configure your Google Scholar settings to enable WCM full text and EndNote export links.
  2. Search Google Scholar for articles about your research topic. Try using Boolean operators, phrase search, and/or one of the techniques described in the University of Pittsburgh's Google Scholar search tips.