Google Scholar is a free search engine that helps users find scholarly literature from many sources and disciplines. It can be used to search for: articles, books, theses, abstracts, and court opinions. Google Scholar ranks documents based on a number of factors, including: The full text of the document, The publication source, The author, and How often and recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.
Google Scholar's citation feature provides citations in various formats, such as MLA, APA, and Chicago, which can be copied and pasted into research.
Some things to note about Google Scholar include:
Search results are typically sorted by relevance, not date.
Google Scholar often links to papers and articles on commercial publisher websites, which may require a subscription or payment for an article.
In searches by author or year, the first search results are often highly cited articles.