Chapter Eight: Using Google Scholar
Validating resources
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As we established before, Google Scholar is a tool that can be used in conjunction with others to find valid resources in our research. In this sense, we can establish the trajectory of an author as well as the importance and influence of a certain journal in our field of study.
Author Profiles
If an author’s name is underlined in green, that indicates that they have a Google Scholar Account. For example, when searching “social media in writing classrooms,” I noted that a recent book by Ken Hyland has a high citation count:
Clicking on his underlined name links to his profile page where you can get an overview of his research interests, publications, citation counts, and even a list of his co-authors. Google Scholar also ranks his publications by citation to illustrate which of his works are making the biggest impact in the field. You can also follow authors to stay current with their research.
Journal Metrics
The Metrics link allows you to search for the highest-ranking journals by field. The rankings are determined by the “h5” index, which documents the number of articles published in a journal over the last five years that have been cited at least ten times. The first page shows the rankings for all scholarly journals, which include Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Science as the top three. From there, you can click on the categories tab to view the results by discipline:
