Keywords

Google Scholar, databases, library comparison

Abstract

Google Scholar (GS) was released as a beta product in November of 2004. Since then, GS has been scrutinized and questioned by many in academia and the library field. Our objectives in undertaking this study were to determine how scholarly GS is in comparison with traditional library resources and to determine if the scholarliness of materials found in GS varies across disciplines. We found that GS is, on average, 17.6% more scholarly than materials found only in library databases and that there is no statistically significant difference between the scholarliness of materials found in GS across disciplines.

Original Publication Citation

Jared L. Howland, Thomas C. Wright, Rebecca A. Boughan and Brian C. Roberts. "How Scholarly Is Google Scholar? A Comparison to Library Databases". College & Research Libraries vol. 70 no. 3 227-234, May 2009. doi: 10.5860/crl.70.3.227