SOC 260: Galta, S. (Winter 2025)

Finding Full-Text in Google Scholar

Generally, the web is not the easiest or best place to find scholarly articles; I'd go to the databases or books first.  But there are some scholarly articles on the web.  One way to separate the scholarly from the non-scholarly is to use the Google Scholar search engine (scholar.google.com).  Google Scholar searches for scholarly citations that are free on the web.

The only downside is that most of the time, Google Scholar finds only citations.  That's because the articles themselves are usually not free, especially if they are published in journals!  Every once in a while, though, you will get lucky and find free full text articles.  If you are not lucky, ask your librarians, we might be able to find the article another way (with no charges involved).

Results in Google Scholar are ordered by relevance, and relevance is determined by the number of times the article has been cited by others.

• Underneath the link to an article, there is a "Cited by" link to all the other articles that have cited it.
• A link to the right of the article title indicates full text

(click on image to enlarge)

Evaluating Online Sources

When searching online, remember to evaluate the sources you use to ensure they are credible. 

The main questions to ask yourself are:

• Who wrote this information? 
• How do I know they're an expert? 
• When did they write (or record) this?
• Most importantly -- will my audience think they're an expert?

View the tips and tricks in the video below to learn more about how to better search the web.

Here are just a few of the full-text articles on LGBTQ+ representation you can find on Google Scholar.