5.1.1 General query pane

This pane contains the following fields.

Author(s)

Enter the names of the authors you want to look up. The recommended format is to use one or more initials and to quote each name, for example "A Harzing". Try to use the initials that the author usually publishes under. You can enter more than one name; this behaves as an AND clause (only co-authored paper), for example "A Harzing" "NG Noorderhaven". To perform an OR query (individual papers AND co-authored ones), include OR in the query: "A Harzing" OR "NG Noorderhaven"

Publication

Enter the name of the publication you want to look up. The recommended format is the full title enclosed in quotes, for example "Journal of International Business". However, you might have to experiment with common abbreviations as well.

All of the words

Enter any words that must all appear in the returned papers. This can be used to narrow down the search for a specific set of papers. If you use quotes around the words, this provides you with the same results as using “The phrase” field. If you include the search terms without quotes, it will provide many more matches as it matches the words in any order. Therefore, if the words are very generic there will be lots of publications that include them.

Please note that the standard Google Scholar search uses “All of the words”. As discussed in Section 3.3.1 and 4.3.1 a standard Google Scholar search often gives meaningless results if you are interested in author or journal impact.

Any of the words

Enter any words that must appear alone or in combination in the returned papers. This can be used to narrow down the search for a specific set of papers. Unless the terms are very specific, it is usually not very effective to use this field without completing any of the other fields as you might get a lot of irrelevant results.

None of the words

Enter any words that must not appear in the returned papers. This can be used to narrow down the search for a specific set of papers.

The phrase

Enter a phrase (i.e., a specific sequence of words) that must all appear in the returned papers. This can be used to narrow down the search for a specific set of papers.

Year of publication between ... and ...

Enter the range of years in which the papers must have been published.

Subject areas

Check the boxes of the subject areas that you want to search in; clear the others. Clearing all boxes has the same effect as checking them all: the lookup will ignore the subject areas.

Note: Please note that the subject area classification is not always accurate; see “How to perform an effective author/journal impact analysis” for more information

Title words only

Check this box to restrict the additional word matches (i.e., All of the words, Any of the words, None of the words, The phrase) to the titles of the returned papers; clear the box to match them anywhere in the papers.

Lookup

Click this button to perform the query. If possible, the query is satisfied from the local Publish or Perish cache; this saves time and reduces the load on Google Scholar. If no cache entry for the query exists or the entry is older than the maximum cache age, then the query is forwarded to Google Scholar. After the results are received from Google Scholar, the local cache is automatically refreshed.

Lookup Direct

Click this button to send the query directly to Google Scholar, bypassing the local Publish or Perish cache. This may be useful if you suspect that Google Scholar may have newer information available than is available through the local cache. When the results are returned from Google Scholar, the local cache is automatically refreshed.

Note: It is not useful to perform multiple direct lookups for the same query shortly after another; this merely increases the load on Google Scholar and increases the chance that your computer may be temporarily denied access by Google Scholar. I recommend that you only use the Lookup Direct function as a last resort.