The Role of Google Scholar in Evidence Reviews and Its Applicability to Grey Literature Searching

Google Scholar (GS), a commonly used web-based academic search engine, catalogues between 2 and 100 million records of both academic and grey literature (articles not formally published by commercial academic publishers). Google Scholar collates results from across the internet and is free to use. As a result it has received considerable attention as a method for searching for literature, particularly in searches for grey literature, as required by systematic reviews. The reliance on GS as a standalone resource has been greatly debated, however, and its efficacy in grey literature searching has not yet been investigated. Using systematic review case studies from environmental science, we investigated the…

• DF
  Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK Government
• SR
  Sight Research UK

  Award: NE/L011506/1
• RC
  Research Councils UK
• NE
  Natural Environment Research Council

  Award: NE/L011506/1