Is Google Scholar A Valid Resource For Doctoral Research? A Comparison With Other Databases

Doctoral learners will have to access and use varied forms of academic literature to conduct research, but learners must be able to evaluate and understand the quality of the resources. Four of the most popular academic resource databases are ProQuest, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsychINFO, and Google Scholar. Compared to resources to the first three databases, is Google Scholar a valid for resource for doctoral research? Why or why not?

Doctorates usually have access to varied types of academic literature to research on a piece of information. In that regard internet has provided with a lot of helpful sites such as Proquest, education resources information centre (ERIC). PhychiNFO  and  Google  scholar. Though there are many such fantastic search engines it is the task of the learners to absorb what is being taught and apply their own knowledge and education, to understand the research.

In this piece of essay the fact that is being tried to apply is that Google scholar is a valid resource for doctoral research and how and in what way it is different from the other search engines such as Proquest, Eric and PsychiNFO.

Google scholar: Google scholar has presented their readers with a very simple platform to search for scholarly database (Library.sdsu.edu, 2015)

 In Proquest the readers cannot find each word individually if they search for a quotation they have to use quotation marks but then the database finds something exactly the same that is typed instead of each word individually which narrows the search profusely. But in Google scholar a term could be excluded from the search just by using a hyphen in front of the word which gets rid of irrelevant terms (Miller & Pellen, 2009).

Google scholar usually contains more databases for any disciplines but Psychinfo contains great coverage on Psychology only.

Education Resources Information Center is a digitalized online library which provides easy access to scholarly education to support scholarly work in the universities While Google Scholar provides relevant Information In many disciplines for the general reader (Van Noorden, 2014).

Conclusion: Thus Based on the research we can see that Google Scholar Is more efficient and is a valid source of searching for resources than the other search engines such as Proquest , Eric and Psychinfo.

References:

Library.sdsu.edu,. (2015). Using Google Scholar Effectively | Library & Information Access | San Diego State University. Retrieved 11 February 2015, from https://library.sdsu.edu/reference/news/using-google-scholar-effectively

Miller, W., & Pellen, R. (2009). Google Scholar and more. London: Routledge.

Van Noorden, R. (2014). Google Scholar pioneer on search engine’s future. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2014.16269