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Google Scholar Advanced Tips

1. Google Scholar can be used to find professional papers written by scholars and scientists on a wide variety of topics.

The following example returns papers on the subject of optometry written by people named Penisten:

penisten optometry

Enter the name in quotes if running a search on a topic that includes an author's last name and their initial(s):

"d penisten" optometry

Below is an example of formatting a search on an author's last name and initials, while not focusing on a particular topic:

"d penisten"

Another method that can be used to search for professional papers written by a particular author is to type author: followed by the author's last name. For example:

author:penisten optometry

Below are examples of two different approaches for running the same search when using an author's initials or full name (exclude the word optometry if wanting to search only for the author):

author:"d penisten" optometry
author:"douglas penisten" optometry

2. Searching for papers on a particular topic that also happens to be a personal name.

Let's say that you want to search for professional papers on the topic of wood, but you do not want to clutter the results with papers written by someone named Wood. The following example accomplishes this goal:

wood -author:wood

To search for papers on the topics of wood or woods, while ignoring any papers written by someone named Wood or Woods, try entering the terms as a string in the search box:

wood woods -author:wood -author:woods


3. Searching for words that appear in the title of a professional paper.

If wanting to run a search for specific words in the titles of professional papers, use the intitle command. The following examples illustrates searching for papers having to do with peppermint and peppermint oil:

intitle:peppermint
intitle:"peppermint oil"

If wanting to search for papers having to do with peppermint and candy, but not necessarily the exact phrase peppermint candy, try the below example:

intitle:peppermint candy

Page maintained by: Gary Cheatham
Last updated: September 29, 2011