Distance Education Guide

Google for Research

Google has some tips and tricks for getting targeted search results. 

Google Scholar Tips

Google Scholar is an excellent resource for finding scholarly articles, journals, books, theses, dissertations, technical and research reports, and court opinions and patents. Below are some tips in refining your search results in order to get highly relevant content:

Your search results are normally sorted by relevance, not by date. To find newer articles, try the following options in the left hand menu of your results list:

• click "Since Year" to show only recently published papers, sorted by relevance;
• click "Sort by date" to show just the new additions, sorted by date;
• Define the date range of published articles by clicking on "Custom Range...."
  • Pro tip: for STEM topics update the date range to include articles published in the last 5 years, for Humanities topics update to the last 10 years. 

One of the most useful for this assignment is to search within a domain extension.

Here are some examples using the death penalty topic:

• death penalty and crime prevention site:.gov
• death penalty and crime prevention site:.edu
• death penalty and crime prevention site:.org