Implementing Creative Approaches within Google Scholar’s Advanced Search Interface to Retrieve Higher Likelihood for Journal Articles: A Quantitative Study into Google Scholar’s Lack of Format Limiters

Abstract

This quantitative study seeks out creative approaches (CA) to solve some of Google Scholar’s shortcomings, notably a lack of clear database controls for resource format selection, along with an absence of a peer-reviewed button. As the primary endeavor, the research proposal targets three (theology-specific) research questions at Google Scholar to discover if certain techniques bring back a higher likelihood of journal articles. As a secondary concern, do the same approaches help readers identify peer-reviewed articles? In its findings, the CAs impacted the overall research questions differently. As intended, CA-3A and CA-3B both removed capstone papers from the search results; however, CA-3B cut too many journal articles, whereas CA-3A only reduced journal formats marginally. Successfully, all three variations of CA-4 deducted some book titles without affecting the journal formats; CA-4A performed the most helpful in both outcomes. For CA-5, it labeled journal articles with high precision, though not systematically. CA-5 also reflected the only approach of any value to assist detecting a peer-reviewed journal title. Lastly, all three CA-6 approaches considerably reduced the size of the search results. Notably, CA-6B aggressively removed book formats, while not inadvertently throwing out journal articles. Key terms: Academic dissertations; academic librarianship; book format; Boolean searching; comparative studies; database searching; Google Scholar; information retrieval