Google Scholar Guide: CU Library Links and Finding Literature Reviews

Google Scholar Guide: CU Library Links and Finding Literature Reviews

As of fall 2024, the CU community can now use Google Scholar to find links to items in the CU Montgomery Library online collection. Why would you consider doing this?

• Easily find CU Montgomery Library articles alongside free scholarly content from across the Internet.
• Easily find literature reviews: Some assignments require using literature review articles, and Google Scholar includes a filter on the left to find them. CU Search currently does not have this ability.

Note: No Google account is needed, but if you have a Google account, then your account will remember if you enable CU Library links.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

These images are for illustration purposes, and the layout of Google Scholar may be updated in the future.

Step 1: 

Go to https://scholar.google.com/ 

 

Step 2: 

Click the menu bar icon at the top left to view the menu items.

 

Step 3: 

Click Settings on the menu bar.

 

Step 4: 

Click Library links.

 

Step 5: 

Type in Campbellsville University and click the blue search icon or hit enter.

 

Step 6: 

Click any checkboxes that appear for Campbellsville University, and click Save at the bottom right. Note: If you are also logged into your Google account, your account will remember this setting. If you do not have a Google account, make sure to follow these steps and check these boxes every time when you use Google Scholar in the future.

 

Step 7: 

Type in your search on the Google Scholar homepage.

 

Step 8: 

Look for sources with the blue links CU Full Text View or Full Text @ CU. Many items in Google Scholar will be freely available to the general public, but not everything. If an item is held by the CU Montgomery Library online library, you will see a blue link to the right of title stating "CU Full Text View" or "Full Text @ CU." Click that link, and you should then be prompted to log in to your CU Montgomery Library account to view the full text of the item.

 

Filtering for only Literature Review Articles 

If your assignment requires locating literature review articles, Google Scholar is very useful. To filter for this type of source, click the filter that says Review articles on the left side of the page. (The text will turn red when you have selected it.) 

Note: Literature reviews are secondary sources that summarize, analyze, and compare the findings in a group of specially selected studies on a related topic. There a different types of literature review articles, such as meta-analysis articles and systematic review articles, which have different purposes.

 

 

Additional Tools: "Cite," "Cited by," and "Related Articles"

Below a source's title, click "Cite" to view an automatically generated citation. After you copy and paste it into your list of sources, make sure to edit the citation for missing or incorrect information.

"Cited by" allows you to see a list of sources that reference that title. This can help you determine the impact of an article, and can help you find more up-to-date sources on similar topics.

Also consider clicking "Related Articles" to narrow down your search.

Using InterLibrary Loan to Request Items Found on Google Scholar

If you find an article title with no full-text link in Google Scholar, try copying the first part of the title and putting it in quotation marks into CU Search. Skip the colon and the subtitle, because the colon throws off the search. Here is an example:

Original Title found on Google Scholar: Team-building effects on company performance: A business game-based study

What to put into CU Search: "Team-building effects on company performance"

Then if the article does not appear, click "At my libraries" and then "Other libraries." If the article is available at another library, the article title will show up in the results with the label "At other libraries." Then click the article title, and on the right, click the red button for "Request Item through Interlibrary Loan." Put in your information and click "Submit." The library staff will check if the item is available, and most likely you will receive an electronic version of the item within two weeks.

Checking if a Google Scholar Source is Peer Reviewed:

Many items that appear on Google Scholar are not actually peer-reviewed and are not appropriate to cite in professional academic work. If you need to check if a source from Google Scholar is sufficiently peer-reviewed, copy and paste the beginning of the title in quotation marks into CU Search, and click search. (Skip the colon and the sub-title if there is one because the colon will throw off the search.) Then on the left, click "At my library" and click the checkbox for "Libraries Worldwide." If the article is published in a well-known peer-reviewed scholarly journal, then it should show up with the term "Peer-reviewed" in bold appearing below the title of the article and the journal. If the article does not appear in the results, it might not be from a reputable source, so you will need to do your own background research on the author, the journal, and the editorial process.