How to Use Google Scholar to Find New Research on Your Website

A few weeks back, I wrote an article for ResearchGate on how academics can use social media to find and engage with new research.

Since then, I have had a few conversations with other academics who expressed an interest in expanding on that topic. So, in this article, I will walk through how to use Google Scholar to find new research on your website.

Why Should You Use Google Scholar?

First off, let’s establish the purpose of this tool – to provide you with an easy mechanism to find and monitor new research on your published articles. As a research librarian, I often find myself delving deep into obscure multidisciplinary databases to find the latest research for my patrons. In doing so, I often stumble upon studies carried out by renowned universities and institutes around the world. However, I don’t always have the time to read through hundreds of abstracts from unrelated disciplines. That’s where Google Scholar comes in – it automatically scans the literature for citations to your articles and compiles a list of newly published studies.

Additionally, Google Scholar allows you to monitor the impact of your own research. By entering your search terms, you will see the number of times your publications have been cited in other scholarly works. For instance, if I search for “cell phone apps and mhealth,” I will see that my most recent article has been cited almost 100 times. This is because many influential researchers have used my work to further their own fields.

How To Use Google Scholar To Find New Research On Your Website

To start finding new research on your website, navigate to https://scholar.google.com and click on the Create New Doc button at the top of the screen. You will then see a small menu of options. Choose the Research tab to display your existing articles and publications. From here, you can also download a full-text copy of any article of interest in PDF format if you don’t have time to read it online. Once you have clicked on the article, you can either read it immediately or click the Watch tab to create a new list of articles for later review.

Create New Doc

After you have clicked on Create New Doc, you will see a small menu of options. From here, you can create and name your new document, add reviewers, and set the due date. To add new reviewers, click on the Add Another Reviewer button next to the existing reviewers. This will pop-up a box where you can specify the email addresses of additional reviewers.

Once your new article is ready to go live, simply click the Publish button. Congratulations, you have published a new article! You can see that new article listed under the Published tab on your Google Scholar dashboard. You can also go back to the previous tab – either your existing articles or the ones you have just published – to monitor the progress of your research.

If you have any questions about using Google Scholar, feel free to contact me via the Scholar blog’s contact form or on Twitter @_mzochowski.