Google Scholar is a search engine that indexes a large variety of peer-reviewed literature, like Web of Science and Scopus; however, Google Scholar is more comprehensive because it includes:
If the article has been cited by others, a link reading “cited by” will be part of the Google Scholar record. Clicking on that link will take you to the list of articles that cited the scholarly item.
Google Scholar searching is generally easier and faster than either Web of Science or Scopus and the most efficient way to search Google Scholaris by using the software Publish or Perish.
The URL for Google Scholar is http://scholar.google.com/. Use the drop-down arrow if you want to go to the advanced search page.
Most search results in Google Scholar will include a link at the bottom that says "cited by [N]." Clicking on this link will bring you to another results page that lists all the citing articles.
A couple of tips for better Google Scholar searching:
If you need help with your search strategy, go to the Google Scholar Help page for tips.
Google Scholar has a set of metrics tools for users who want to track their citations or see how a journal is ranked. These tools are found in the upper right corner of the Scholar home page:
If you want to keep tabs on your citations, there are two ways to do it.
First, you can create a profile in "my citations." Simply click on the icon and follow the prompts. If you enter the titles of the publications you wish to track, Google Scholar will keep a running tab for you.
Second, you can create an alert. The best way to do this is to search for the item or items you want to track, and once you've found a set of results you like, click the "alert" icon on the results page:
This will bring you to a confirmation screen that looks something like this:
Once you click "create alert," Google Scholar will e-mail you every time it discovers a new citation to the article.
If you want to track citations by author name, it's important to include in your search all the ways you think that author's name might be listed in the citations. Connect them with OR. This kind of searching can be very tricky, however, as it's hard to say what characters and search operators Google's search engine pays attention to. Notice that in the example below, the initials are connected to the surname by a hyphen. However, Google will accept the search without a hyphen (the results are slightly different) and there's no explanation of what the hyphen does.