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Find quality information

How to find quality information for academic purposes, including databases, specific information formats, Google Scholar and the web, research alerts and evaluating information.

Searching Google Scholar

Google Scholar searches for scholarly resources including journal articles, theses, books, conference proceedings, court reports and patents. For more thorough searching, use Google Scholar in conjunction with the key academic databases in your discipline.  

Google Scholar advanced search

If the simple search is returning too many or irrelevant results, try the advanced search.

  1. Click the Options menu .
  2. Then click Advanced search to get options to: 
    • find words in the title only
    • return articles from particular authors or journals
    • choose years to search.

Find other relevant results

When you find a good result, click on Related articles or Cited by for other results that might be good for your topic.

Set up an email alert

Get notified when new results that match your search are found by Google Scholar.

  1. Run your search.
  2. Click on Create alert.
  3. Enter your email address to get notified when new results match your search.

Get more search tips from Google Scholar, including searching by author, title or date.

Getting the full text from Google Scholar

Google Scholar may not always have the full text of the resource that you are after. You can make it easier to get full text via the UQ Library collections by using the Library Links settings:

Enable View @ UQ Library link

  1. Go to Google Scholar.
  2. Click the Options menu. Then, select the Settings cog.
  3. Select Library Links.
  4. Search for and select UQ University of Queensland Library – View @ UQ Library.
  5. Click Save.

Your search results will then show the View @ UQ Library link when access is available via UQ Library.

Resources not available online may display a Get @ UQ Library link within the clickable >> symbol. Use this option to request access by document delivery.

Google Scholar prioritises displaying the most stable and direct access using its own algorithm. In some cases, the UQ Library links may be found under All x versions.

Getting full text via the Library

If you can't get the full text using the links provided by Google Scholar, you may still get full text by following our instructions for finding specific journal articles. If it is not available, you can:

Export results to EndNote referencing software

reference icon You can set an option to export the citations you find to EndNote referencing software.

Set up export to EndNote

  1. Press the Options  menu.
  2. Then select the Settings cog.
  3. Under Bibliography manager select Show links to import citations.
  4. Choose EndNote from the drop-down.
  5. Click Save.

Run your search, then click on Import into EndNote to save the citation.

Export multiple references to EndNote

Note: You must be signed into a Google account to use this feature.

  1. Run your search.
  2. Click the star icon on each result you want to export.
  3. Click My library on the Google Scholar page to see the list of results you selected.
  4. Select the results to export.
  5. Click the Export icon and choose EndNote.