Google Scholar

Much of the time, a simple keyword search will help you find what you need. However, there are times when you may want to have more control over what your search does. You may want to control the publication date, search for results by a particular author or in a particular journal, give synonyms, or remove unwanted results. When you need to do this, the Advanced Scholar Search menu can help. 

1. To pull up the Advanced Scholar Search menu, go to the regular Google Scholar search page.
2. In the upper left corner of the page, press the button made of three horizontal lines to open a new menu. 
3. Advanced Search should be the second to last option in the newly-opened menu. 

The Advanced Scholar Search menu has eight ways of searching, organized into three broad sections. You are able to mix and match these different search options together.

All / Exact Phrase / At Least One / Without

Helps you control the search words you are searching with.

• Words typed into the first search bar must all be included in your result. This is how a regular Google Scholar search works.
• Words types into the second search bar will be searched as an exact phrase. Not only must all of those words be included in each results, they must be included together in the exact order you wrote them in.
  • You can also do this in the regular search bar by putting the words in quotes. Ex. "myocardial infarction" 
• When words are typed into the third search bar, Google Scholar will give you any result that included at least one of those words. This can be a good way to incorporate synonyms or related ideas into your search. 
  • You can also do this in the regular search bar by putting "OR" in between your search words. Ex. Missouri politics OR government
• When words are typed into the fourth search bar, Google Scholar will only return results without those words. This can be useful if your results are cluttered with things that are not relevant to your search. 
  • You can also do this in the regular search bar by putting a minus sign (-) before a word. Ex. Shakespeare -tragedies

Where My Words Occur

Controls where Google Scholar will look for your search words. 

• Selecting "anywhere in the article" will likely turn up a larger number of results, because the search engine can look for your keywords in more places. This is the Google Scholar default. 
• Selecting "in the title of the article" may help improve the relevance of your results, because if your keyword is in the title, it is likely more important to what the article is about.

Authored by/Published in/ Dated Between

• The first search bar lets you search for results by a certain author. 
  • You can also do this in the regular search bar by putting "author:" before the author's name. Ex. intersectionality author:Crenshaw
• The second search bar lets you search for results in a particular scholarly journal. Google Scholar understands many common ways of abbreviating journal titles.
• The last search tool lets you search for results from within a range of publication dates. 
  • You can also adjust this from the results page.