Tool

Google Scholar

A powerful index of scholarly literature across disciplines, languages, time periods, and publishing formats.

Using Google Scholar with your HarvardKey allows you to make the most of provided links, granting access to full text available through Harvard Library subscriptions.

Google Scholar can quickly surface highly cited peer-reviewed articles, abstracts, books, patents, scholarly web pages, and more. 

Explore Google Scholar

Connect Google Scholar To Your Library Access

Connecting Google Scholar to your Harvard Library access is a good way to make sure you get access to articles that Harvard Library subscribes to.

Here's how: 

  1. Go to Google Scholar and sign in to your Google account
  2. Look for the menu options
  3. Go into the settings and select "Library links"
  4. Type in Harvard and select: Harvard University - Try Harvard Library
  5. Deselect the box for WorldCat if shown
  6. Save your preferences
  7. Search your topic and look for the "Try Harvard Library" links to the right of the articles. This link should take you to Harvard's access to that item

Google Scholar Tips

  • Like Google, Google Scholar allows searching of metadata terms, but unlike Google, it also indexes full text. 
  • Choose the default search or select “Advanced search” to search by title, author, journal, and date.
  • For more advanced researchers, it is possible to specify phrases in quotation marks, enter Boolean queries, or search within fields.
  • You may also create an account to set up your author profile or sign up for alerts.
  • In settings, you may elect to limit your search by language and show citation import links.
  • Results are returned in relevance-ranked order, generally favoring entries when search terms appear in document titles and prioritizing documents with larger citation counts.