Evaluating Information: Fake News: Using Google wisely

Here at KU, the librarians have configured Google Scholar to work with some of the library databases to pull in the PDF of articles you have a paid subscription for as a student here.  To take advantage of this "extra", you need to use a special link.  You can get it by going to the A-Z Database link and selecting Google Scholar from that page, or use this link:   https://library.kutztown.edu/googlescholar

A Word of Caution:

• Google SCHOLAR is a subset of the larger Google search engine. It searches only for articles from mostly scholarly sources where the holder of the copyright has allowed internet access.
• There is a problem in academic publishing, sometimes referred to as "predatory journals."  These are made-up, online journals that charge authors to publish their articles, but the journals do not have legitimate peer-review, and will publish anything for a price.  Often these journal names are closely related to the names of legitimate journals, so be careful.  Google Scholar does nothing to filter-out these fake scholarly journals.
• The Library provides a list of predatory journals, called Cabells Predatory Journals.  You can check a suspicious journal against this list.  And if you still have doubts, you can CHAT with a librarian, or email your professor.

Google's Advanced Search

• Use Google’s advanced searches to limit your results to more reliable domains (e.g. .gov and .edu). 

  • Web Search - http://www.google.com/advanced_search  
  • Image Search - http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
  • Scholar Search - http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search

To help you evaluate the sites you find:

• info:  for information about a website. Works best with the homepage address.  info:aclu.org

• related: search for related sites, use the word "related" followed by a colon:  related:api.org

• link: Find out where someone referenced this link on the website:  link:wwf.org

• v-e-r-y important: there is no space after the colon when using these commands; don't need to put in the "http" or the "www"

1. site:.[extension]   put in your keywords and then add site: [extension for website, like .com]
   • for example:  scholarships   site:.edu
   • site:.org for organizations; site:.gov for government sites
2. Use quotes for names and phrases:  "Donald Trump"   "climate change"   "left wing"
3. Use a hyphen to exclude terms:  football  -soccer
4. Search a range of numbers with two dots:    2008..     100..150       ..50
   1. This works great with monetary vaules, for example, $10.00..$50.00