Google Scholar beta

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Product summary

CNET editors' take

• Reviewed by: Elsa Wenzel
• Edited by: Robert Vamosi
• Reviewed on: 04/27/2006

In our tests, we found that the Google Scholar beta sifts through more publications than does the Windows Live Academic Search beta (though Microsoft plans to add more sources). Google found 44,000 results when we looked up thalidomide--8,410 of those within the past few years--far more than Windows Live Academic Search's total of 1,595 finds. If you're just researching physics and astronomy, for instance, and need to weed out articles on computer science, you can narrow your searches at Google's Advanced Scholar page. There, you can also have Google look through specific journals or look for specific authors and date ranges; Windows Live offers no similar tool.

The Google Scholar beta lets you narrow down searches to specific date ranges and journals. Here, we instantly found 30 results for articles about thalidomide, published within the past two years in journals with the word nature in their title.

Use the Preferences page to make Google Scholar work best for you, such as searching only your university's library. Tell Google to hunt within the stacks at Northwestern University, for example, and a Find It @NU Library link appears next to articles in stock at that institution. Google can add a Library link for up to three institutions at a time. You can also choose to find reports in Chinese, Spanish, German, and Portuguese in addition to English. Google's Cited By link lets you jump to other referring articles; however, unlike with Windows Live Academic Search, there's no author link to let you immediately find, say, publications by one of your professors.

The Google Scholar beta also lets you display citation links to import into BibTex, EndNote, RefMan, or RefWorks. Windows Live Academic Search displays only BibTex or EndNote formats. Plus, Google provides a quick way to add its Scholar search bar to your own Web site.

Yet we found that Microsoft's dynamic Academic interface organizes research results better than Google's interface does. Where Google Scholar displays a text list of finds next to a vast field of white space, the right side of the screen within Windows Live Academic displays an article abstract. We'd also like Google to integrate Scholar into its other products, such as the Google Reader beta and your Google home page. For instance, Google's main search page doesn't provide a link to Scholar. And unlike the Windows Academic Search beta, Google Scholar doesn't allow you to save your finds or subscribe to feeds on a research topic for updates in an RSS reader.

Overall, we found the Google Scholar beta to be a more rigorous and customizable research tool than its rival, although Windows Live Academic Search better integrates its finds with the brand's other services.

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• 2.5 stars

  "Find the gold between bunch of Junk."

  by dkcreat on July 25, 2007

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Where to buy Google Scholar beta

Visit the developer's Web site to access this free beta service.