Pro – very large
Pro – most cited articles tend to appear first
Con – you can't limit the results to quantitative, qualitative, or rhetorical research
Con – recent articles will not appear unless the publication date is limited (e.g. Since 2020)
Con – only a fraction of the results will be from peer-reviewed journals (no way to limit to this)
Con – only an even smaller fraction will be empirical studies (no way to limit to this)
Con – only about 400 results are actually available (despite the number posted at the top of the page)
Con – not a communication studies database
Con – can’t search by subject or abstract and no truncation or Boolean operators
Google Scholar example - women and politics and the United States
Trying to find research articles published in scholarly journals on topics in communication with Google Scholar is difficult. Here are a variety of examples and techniques that can improve your odds of success:
Google Scholar provides a powerful way to search articles that have cited a favorite article. Enter the title of a favorite article into Google Scholar then click on the "Cited by" option underneath the entry.
Then be sure to check the Search within citing articles box.
Then enter a concept and search all of the citing articles for that word.
Though Google Scholar doesn't have an option to limit to empirical studies (research) you might be able to modify your searches to increase the odds of retrieving research articles.
Since most research articles include sections titled Discussion and Results you could include both of these words - in quotes - as part of your search.
