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University Library

Social Sciences - Research Skills - Intermediate

In this course you will learn how to determine your need for information; find information effectively and efficiently; check information carefully; process and save information.

Contents and access

Google Scholar is the best known search engine for academic literature. It's free for everyone and covers all scientific disciplines.

Types of publications in Google Scholar: 

  • Scientific articles (peer and non-peer reviewed)
  • Working Papers
  • Policy Papers
  • Conference Proceedings
  • Preprints
  • Theses and dissertations

With Google Scholar, you do not automatically have access to the full text of publications. From the VU campus, Google Scholar gives you access to all content to which VU has a subscription. You can recognize this content by the text 'VU LibSearch' at the right site.

When working from home (off campus), make sure Google Scholar recognizes you as a VU-student:

  • Install the Lean Library Plugin in your favourite browser. The plugin 'warns' you when to login with your VUnet-id to access an article.
  • Go to the setting of Scholar to library links, search 'Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and mark it.

Searching in Google Scholar

  • When you search in Google Scholar with search terms, the entire text of an article is searched by default.
  • It automatically searches for word variants. For example, with the search term “diet,” you will also find “dietary” and “diets.”

Operators you can use are: 

OR Shows all results that contain any of the search terms gestures OR body language
"" Look for the exact wording between the quotation marks "dutch language"
- Excludes search term in search results language -dutch
site: Searching for a publication on a website resilience site:vu.nl
* Search for any missing word in a sentence or name "Adam * Smith"