We have previously mentioned the Google search engine as a key tool, but we cannot detract from others that are also essential today for certain fields, such as Google Maps. If we talk about the educational field, you may be interested in knowing this version of Google, since in fact it is specially designed for all the students of the world (regardless of the level of education in which they are).
Learn more about Google Scholar
Google Scholar (or Google Scholar as it is known outside our country) is a search engine that looks very similar to what we are used to, since it really looks the same. The difference between the two is in the search algorithms used, since this is focused on seeking academic and scientific content onlyleaving aside the most “common” results that the traditional search engine could throw at us.
By limiting itself to showing us results of this type, Google Scholar becomes very useful if, for example, we need to find an essay or an article to do a job. Not only will it show us some documents, but it will also be possible to search by author or by publication to find more about the person responsible for an article. As long as the text is on the Internet, Google Scholar will be able to search for us quotes, thesis and any type of document you can think of.
Google Scholar homepage.
One of the best things that this search engine has is that it allows us to create our own digital library. To do this, we will only need to log in with our Google account, and as we will see later, thanks to this we will have access to a tab in which to store all the books, theses or other documents that we need or that we have not finished reading. It is curious that it is a somewhat unknown tool for the general public, since Google Scholar has been running for 18 years.
So you can use this version of the browser
We have already told you that Google Scholar looks very similar to the traditional Google search engine, so as you can imagine using it is just as simple. The first thing we should do is go to the Google Scholar page, which you can access through from this link. Once inside we recommend, as we have said before, that you log in with your Google account.
To start searching, we only have to enter the term or phrase that interests us in the bar provided for this purpose. When searching we can choose if we only want Google Scholar to throw us results in Spanish or in any language, an option that will obviously give us much more to choose from. Once we already have the results on the screen, it will be when we begin to see the real differences with the other search engine.
This is how searches appear.
The first thing that stands out is that each document that appears on the screen will indicate on the left what it is, whether it is a book, a PDF or a web page. We can settle for looking at result by result to see if its content convinces us, but if you look closely you will be able to see how under each one we will have the possibility of seeing all the citations that have been made to it, as well as related items and the different versions that are available.
The left part of the screen is also very useful. This allows us to put some filters to eliminate results that may not interest us, in addition to limiting the results by dates or language. This part also has an option called create alertwhich allows us to enter a series of words so that Google notifies us every time a new article or text related to them is published.
Finally, there is the issue of the library that we have discussed a little above. Using this is very simple, since to put texts or articles inside the only thing we have to do is press the star-shaped button below each one, with the text Save. By doing this, we will automatically have said text in our library, and to access it we will only have to click on the button that we will find at the top that indicates My library.
Create one or several lists to save what you want.
