What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar
The communication benefits offered by the internet have facilitated educational opportunities as well and it must be mentioned that a huge amount of scholarly articles are now available to students all over the world on relevant topics on the internet. Google Scholar also referred to as GS is a search program offered by Google for free which provides a catalog of various scholarly articles along with their publishing details. It can be said without any doubt that it has been of great help to researchers worldwide as for them any information related to their object of study or interest can be obtained just a click away. It is definitely for most an easier means of attaining knowledge than running around different libraries often being unable to find all the necessary details.
The internet offers a comprehensive list of articles available, thus making it easier for the researcher to choose his requirements accordingly. Google Scholar boasts of having access to more websites and journals than many of its competitors like getCITED, CiteSeer and Scirus from Elsevier. Also recently in 2006, in order to combat the arrival of its major opponent Microsoft Windows Live Academic, Google Scholar introduced bibliography managers which are also available in the other search engines like getCITED, CiteSeer and Scirus.
However, Google Scholar has been criticized within academic spheres due to several reasons. It has been alleged time and again that searching by referring to publishing dates often produce erroneous results thus affecting research works. The database design is also unsatisfactory and not up to the mark. Moreover, certain journals and authorary articles have denied being a part of this search vehicle thus affecting the prospects of Google Scholar. But despite so, Google Scholar is still undeniably an easy means of acquiring necessary data and information from the internet.
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