CELEBRATING

YEARSOF PUBLICATION

Conducting Better Research:Google Scholar and the Future of

Search Technologyby Michael L. Kent

since technology seems to advance in dog years,and the closer someone is in age to a technology thebetter they tend to understand it, keeping up withtechnology is not easy for many professionals. Theodds are good that many of the readers of PublicRelations Quarterly are not familiar with the latestInternet search tools. Thus, as part of my continuingeffort to stay smarter than the average 12 year old,I offer an overview of one of the latest and perhapsmost significant research and information tools in thelast twenty five years: Google Scholar.

Research is at the heart of all effective public rela-tions. Several new pilot projects have been underwayfor over a year now to test a new variety of searchengine that searches for scientific/scholarly informa-tion. The new search technology has great potentialfor improving the caliber of public relations research.

Michael L Kent

Two of these projects are "CrossRef", found at: www3.interscience.wiley.com/crossref.html, amulti-publishersystem being tested by a consortium of 35 academicpublishers and including more than 1,000 scholarlyjournals, and Google Scholar, found at: www.scholar.google.com, a similar project to search scholarlyjournals. Google Scholar also draws upon scholarlymaterial gleaned from other sources especially theWeb. Currently, Google and CrossRef are workingtogether. The publishers in the CrossRef consortium,which includes some of the largest academic publish-ers including John Wiley & Sons, Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, Taylor &; Francis, and others, have givenGoogle permission to index their databases.

Some issues in the partnership still have not beenworked out but CrossRef and Google have madegreat progress. As Craig Van Dyck, Vice President ofOperations, John Wiley and Sons Inc. and chair of theCrossRef Search committee, explained at a lecture inNew Jersey recently, Google views the universe of aca-demic literature more broadly than CrossRef (which iscomprised of a consortium of educational publishers),and consequently is less concerned with identifyingauthentic sources for articles when it returns searchresults. Additionally, Elsevier Science Inc., publishersof Public Relations Review and thousands of otherjournals has opted out of participating in the CrossRefconsortium or with Google Scholar. Although theexclusion of a publisher as important as Elsevier issignificant in terms of the strength of the CrossRef/Google Scholar database, Google scholar still indexesarticles located on the Web and from bibliographiccitations. Many of the articles indexed by Elsevier stillcome up in Google Scholar searches.

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In order to help professionals at all levels (practi-tioners, teachers, managers, students) conduct moreeffective research, this article will cover four issues:(1) what Google Scholar is and how it works; (2)how Google Scholar can help professionals; (3) howGoogle Scholar can help students/teachers; and (4)how to access the scholarly databases indexed byGoogle Scholar so that you can use Google Scholareffectively. To understand the value of Google Scholaryou must first understand how it is different thanother search engines.

Web sources typically onlypost favorable information

or information designedto support the individual/organization's interests.

What is Google Scholar and How Does itWork?

On the most basic level, Google Scholar is justanother search engine, like Google itself. However,unlike a standard search engine that searches theInternet and pages accessible in cyberspace, GoogleScholar is designed to search for "scholarly" research.Google Scholar searches hundreds of the databasesthat house thousands of scholarly articles and returnshits for journal articles, conference papers, booksand book chapters, governmental reports, scientificreports, dissertation and theses, and other scholarlyinformation.

Some might ask, "Why does it matter w^here theinformation comes from?" The answer is that theinformation that is currently located on the Internet isonly as reliable as the source of the information. Websources typically only post favorable information orinformation designed to support the individual/orga-nization's interests.

Anyone who has used the Internet knows howvaluable it can be for locating everything from e-mailaddresses to products. Search engines really excel attasks that involve sorting through a lot of informa-tion and returning the most relevant results: find-ing answers to factual questions, locating picturesof famous people and places, isolating the source of

important quotations, locating telephone numbers,finding a Web site when you want to buy something,or providing members of the news media with a newsrelease or organizational information.

Where the Internet has always been at its worstis in providing trustworthy and reliable answers tosophisticated or substantive questions. Complex (andmore valuable) information is still housed primarilyin books, journal articles, and research reports. Suchsources are not free on the Web. Rather, newspa-pers, magazines, journal articles, dissertation/theses,and other data are housed in proprietary databases.Although such scholarly databases can be searched forfree through interfaces on many Web sites, the actualarticles are located behind firewalls and in databasesthat belong to the publishers. To obtain articles frompublisher databases users must have paid a fee or beaffiliated with sources that have paid for access like auniversity or college.

What makes articles, books, government reports, etc.more valuable to professionals and academicians is theeditorial process and "blind review" (also called "peerreview" or "refereed"). More simply, the oversightof gatekeepers and experts improves the quality ofresearch. For example, newspapers, books, and manyjournals, like Public Relations Quarterly, are edited. Inedited journals, the content is filtered through expertswho decide if submissions warrant publication. Withthe exception of news Web sites that (hopefully) filtercontent through some editorial process, the remainderof the information on the Web is essentially posted atthe whim of site owners. Information on the Web isoften posted for publicity, sales, marketing, and pub-lic relations purposes, and typically out of a desire toincrease, not limit, what gets published.

The blind review process involves the evaluation ofarticles and books by an editor, as well as several otherprofessionals who are experts on the topic that theyare reviewing and not told who the author is of the textthat they are reviewing. The anonymity of the blindreview process is designed to ensure an unbiased andrigorous review. Most academic/scientific articles andbooks go through a blind review process (as well asmany conference papers at national and internationalconferences), and are typically subject to rejectionLinless all (or most) of the reviewers agree that thearticle deserves publication.

What makes Google Scholar so valuable is that ratherthan searchingthrough the billions ofWeb sites that arecurrently out there, Google Scholar primarily searchesthrough the dozens of scholarly databases that house

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academic articles and indexes to books and researchreports. Indeed, the database for Google Scholar andthe standard Google Web search are completely sepa-rate, making Google Scholar leaner and more flexiblethan a standard Web search. Because Google Scholaruses scholarly material for its search data, the sourcesfound by Google Scholar are a lot more trustworthyand informed by experts/professionals and scientificresearch than a normal Web search. Moreover, most ofthe articles that Google Scholar indexes are not actu-ally on Web sites at all, but contained in proprietarydatabases that can only be accessed with permission.

Search results on Google Scholar are also returnedwith bibliometric data indicating how many otherresearchers have cited the article, book, etc., and thelist of those citations can be displayed to follow up onrelated articles. In keeping with Google's basic searchlogic, which prioritizes results based on "relevance,"results are sorted by most relevant or most cited toleast relevant or least cited.

To locate the Google Scholar feature simply type<www.scholar.googie.com>, or go to the Google Website <www.google.com>, click on the link for "more,"and then click on the icon for the "Scholar" featurelocated near the middle of the group and resemblinga diploma. Once there, the caption beneath the searchbox reads: "Stand on the shoulders of giants," which isjust what Google Scholar allows public relations prac-titioners to do. The search results that are returned ina Google Scholar search represent not only the mostreliable data available in most disciplines (advertising,business, communication, economics, law, marketing,medicine, psychology, political science, public rela-tions) but also the most valuable research as judged byother professionals.

Although Google Scholar is of obvious value toteachers and students, practitioners will find thescholarly information a goldmine as well. More andmore, students and professionals are turning to searchengines to find answers to research questions (pollingdata, scientific studies, etc). Unfortunately, as sug-gested above, turning to the Internet is a poor researchchoice. In most cases, the accuracy of the informationobtained on the World Wide Web cannot be verifiedand the real "valuable" information (proprietary,scholarly, scientific research) is not even posted on theWeb.

Now that the logic behind Google Scholar is clear,the next issue is to explain how Google Scholar canbe of value to professionals. To do this I will give anexample of how Google Scholar might be used toaddress a particular public relations decision.

How Can Google Scholar Help PublicRelations Professionals?

A few years ago a colleague and I wanted to studyorganizational name change. After examining thou-sands of announcements from organizations changingtheir names we came to the not very profound conclu-sion that "organizations change their names a lot."Although we did eventually develop a more sophisti-cated typology of reasons, the frequency of this eventsuggests that this might be a good example.

Imagine that you work for one of those 5,000 orga-nizations that are thinking of changing their name.Name changes are expensive. Besides the obviousexpense involved in re-branding and developing newadvertising materials, the cost of new business cards,stationery, pens, coffee mugs, etc. with the orga-nization's new name on them could be hundreds ofthousands (or millions) of dollars—especially if new

In most cases, the accuracyof the information obtained

on the World Wide Webcannot be verified.

names and logos need to be painted on planes, trucks,buildings, etc. When upper management comes toyou to look into the viability of a name change to dealwith a crisis, merger, acquisition, scandal, etc., GoogleScholar would be a good place to start.

If you visit Google Scholar and input the searchphrase "name change" (in quotations), GoogleScholar would return approximately 2,600 hits. If thesame search phrase were searched for using the stan-dard Google interface, more than 3,300,000 hits arereturned, (Note, in a 2001 Public Relations Quarterlyarticle, "Essential tips for searching the Web," I offersuggestions for how to narrow that list of 2,600 hitsdown using quotation marks, search logic [AND, OR,NOT] and other key terms). With Google Scholar,only scholarly articles are identified. Note also thatnone of the tens of thousands of newspaper articlesor Web sites about companies that have changed theirnames come up, nor do Web sites for consulting firmsthat specialize in name changes, as they would if youconducted a standard Google search.

Looking at the first few screens of information thatcome up on Google Scholar, several articles that might

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be valuable are listed. Consider the first item on thelist, an article by Cooper, Dimitrov, and Rau that hasbeen cited by 49 others. (Note: most articles that arewritten are never cited more than once, if at all. Anarticle that has been cited 49 times is an importantarticle). The citation for the article looks like this:

[PDF] A rose, com by any other nameMJ Cooper, O Dimitrov, PR Rau - Cited by 49 - Web

Search... However, the academic literature has found little

evidence that the announcement of a name changeresults in a positive stock price reaction for the firm. ...

Journal of Finance, 2001 - blackwell-synergy.com- ingenta.com - mgmt.purdue.edu - mgmt.purdue.edu- all 5 versions »

Several other promising articles also come up on thisfirst screen. But, as many readers of Public Relations

Google Scholar can serveas an excellent "first source"

for student and academicresearchers-

Quarterly probably know, when a search enginereturns a list of results in the thousands, researchers areadvised to add a new search term/phrase and resubmitthe search. Interestingly, however, the reason that thislist of 2,600 articles is not as useless as a typical Websearch with 2,000-plus hits might be is because thesearch engine is only indexing articles/books/etc, andnot Web sites with meta-terms designed to draw theattention of search engines. Additionally because theGoogle Scholar search technology uses "relevance"(bibliometric or citation data) for sorting results, theresults returned at the top of lists are more useful thana typical Web search. Many university adniinistra-tors use citation data to judge the value of professors'research when making promotion and tenure decisionsand librarians are increasingly interested in relevanceto create better search engines.

As a research tool, Google Scholar enables profes-sionals interested in specific research topics or areas toquickly identify what other experts in the field considerthe most useful and significant work. By taking intoaccount the citation information that Google Scholarprovides, practitioners and researchers are able toquickly narrow searches down. The only downside tothe Google Scholar interface currently is that because

it is only a "beta test" version, Google has not workedout the bugs on how to keep the database up-to-date.At present, the database might be as many as twomonths out-of-date and users are advised to visit theCrossRef database <www3.interscience.wiley.com/crossref.html> before or after a Google Scholar searchto see what research has been missed. Although bothcites are linked in principle, typically results vary.

How Can Google Scholar Help PublicRelations Students/Professors?

Google Scholar can serve as an excellent "first source"for student and academic researchers. As a professorwho teaches on both the graduate and undergraduatelevel I can attest to the fact students at all levels havepoor library and research skills. Many students (evenat top research institutions) do not even know whatsort of information can be found in a good library.

The problem is that students have learned to turnto search engines first to find information for researchpapers and class assignments. Considering that manyU.S. high schools are under-funded and that teachershave been encouraging students to use the Web as aresearch tool for many years, student reliance on theWorld Wide Web is not surprising. In order to combatthe tendency of students to rely on the biased informa-tion that is found on many Web sites, many professorsnow require students to consult a requisite number of"scholarly sources" (books, articles, etc.) first, and theWeb after that. By encouraging public relations stu-dents (or any student) to obtain scholarly support forall of their research projects, students develop a greaterappreciation for how research can inform practice.Reading scholarship also allows students to becomemore comfortable and less intimidated by scholarlyarticles and books.

Google Scholar facilitates an initial search in a num-ber of ways. Because Google Scholar is not a disciplinespecific search engine, Google Scholar returns searchresu Its for articles from any field that has written aboutthe subject searched for. Because many fields neverlook at research outside of their own discipline, usingGoogle Scholar can lead to better, more thorough,research. Additionally, when students are encouragedto read scholarship from outside their own disciplines,students learn to interpret research better and to con-duct research that is more effective.

The bulk of valuable information and knowledgeuseful for strategic decision-making, problem solving,and crisis management, is not located on organiza-tions' Web sites but in the tens of millions of booksand journal articles that already exist. Are some of

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those books/articles pedantic and difficult to read? Ofcourse. But many books/articles are well written andhave the potential to inform all aspects of business,management, organizational communication, andpublic relations.

Ultimately, the most important reason for encour-aging (or requiring) public relations students to usescholarly sources is because they will become thepractitioners of the future. Learning to differentiate"good" from "bad" research is an important skill.Students who learn to read academic articles properlyand understand how to apply the research and knowl-edge contained in them to practical professional situa-tions become professionals who are more comfortablewith research and ultimately more effective practitio-ners and communicators.

Accessing Scholarly DatabasesAlthough Google Scholar is free to use just like most

other search engines, as illustrated in the exampleabove, most documents, except for books (whicheventually will all be digitized as well), are cited asPDFs (Portable Document Format). However, the PDFdesignation does not really mean that a user will havethe access privileges needed to open the documents.The PDF reference simply means that a PDF of thedocument is available. In the example above of theCooper, Dimitrov, and Rau article, the article can befound in the Journal of Finance, controlled by Ingenta(a data provider).

Unless a user is affiliated with an organization (typi-cally a university/college, or larger company) that haspurchased online access to journal databases (and inmost cases smaller universities do not bave the accessthat larger universities do), the only way that an articlecan be obtained is to pay for it on a per-article basis.The cost for a single article varies but typically, $20-30 is common. Researchers can of course subscribeto important journals in their fields such as PublicRelations Quarterly and gain free electronic access toeach journal. But when conducting research the ideaof subscribing to every journal that has information ofvalue is prohibitively expensive, as is purchasing eacharticle a la carte.

Obviously, access is one of the drawbacks to con-ducting research with Google Scholar. Although manylarge organizations pay for access to databases likeProquest (which indexes Public Relations Quarterly)and EBSCO, access is expensive, and there are varyinglevels of access. Over the last several years, the PublicRelations Society of America has conducted trials ofEBSCO, with the most recent one ending in January

2005. Currently, the PRSA does not offer access toEBSCO for members.

Many states, and organizations, have negotiatedstatewide contracts (New York State's PRSA, forexample). Organizations in states that have negoti-ated statewide contracts may obtain access to EBSCO,and other databases, for reduced rates.

Individual subscriptions are also possible butvery expensive and fairly uncommon. Thus, unlessa researcher is affiliated with a university and hasaccess to several of the thousands of journals ref-erenced by Google, the Google Scholar service is oflimited value. Fortunately, several access solutionspresent themselves:

First, like in the days before the Internet, research-ers can simply go to a university, or a communitylibrary with database access or actual paper journals,and print or download copies of research articles. Ofcourse, not all libraries have access to every article thata researcher might be looking for so it may be neces-sary to search a library's journal database first, beforegoing there to download/print articles.

When conducting researchthe idea of subscribing

to every journal that hasinformation of value is

prohibitively expensive.

Second, as suggested by an EBSCO representa-tive I spoke with, if a researcher has a family mem-ber (spouse, child, etc.) in college, access may beobtained through their school account. Those pro-fessionals with kids in college might even get themto help with the research, which might be a valuableeducational experience!

Third, a researcher could sign up to audit a classat the local college or university and thus obtain theaccess privileges that typically come with a schoolaffiliation.

And Fourth, and perhaps the slowest and leastdignified, an organization might call upon an internto download/print desired files using the student'suniversity access privileges. The down side of usingan intern is that an organization needs to be surethat they always have a student available to assist inthis fashion.

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Using Google ScholarAs mentioned above, in order to use Google Scliolar

effectively, a researcher needs access to one (or sev-eral) of the major database services such as EBSCO,Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (LEA), ProQuest,ScienceDirect, etc. When using Google Scholar I typi-cally find it helpful to do the following:

1. Open onebrowser window to the Google ScholarWeb site.

2. Open another browser window to the databaseservice that your organization has access to. Or,in the case of someone with access to many data-bases through a university, etc., open the browserwindow to the school or library's alphabeticaljournal search page (where books/journals thatthe school can access are alphabetically listed).

Conduct the search for articles, etc. in the GoogleScholar window just like a normal Web search mightbe conducted. That is, if too many results are returned,narrow the search down by adding more search terms,and using quotation marks around names/phrases, tolimit results.

When you find an article that you want, click onthe link for the PDF. If there is an html or text versionavailable, you might click on that first to save time (orcost if you are paying for access). Also, many articlesthat are indexed by Google Scholar can be found onthe home page of the author(s), and frequently thePDF file that Google lists is for a file that can be down-loaded for free.

More often, however, the PDFs identified by Googleare only available through a database host service likeEBSCO for a fee. When this happens, switch to theother browser window that you previously opened(with the journals index) to determine if the journal/article that you are looking for is available throughthe library's journal subscription service. Note, if anarticle is not available and the researcher has libraryprivileges, articles can still be ordered in a few weeksthrough "interlibrary loan," a library service that bor-rows books, articles, etc. from other libraries for free.

Once a journal is located in the browser window forthe library or database provider, most interfaces allowyou to open an index of the journal's volumes/issuesto browse. After a particular volume of a journal hasbeen opened, locate the article that you seek anddownload a copy of the article that you are lookingfor. Articles can be accessed as "abstract only" (whichprovides an overview of the article), "full text" (whichis essentially a text only version of the article withoutformatting), and PDF (which provides an exact copy ofthe article as it looks in print).

While you are browsing the index, be sure to look atthe other articles in the same volume. Many journalspublish special issues and you may discover severalarticles on your subject of interest in the same journalissue. Finally, look at the bibliography of the articlesthat you find the most useful to see who the expertswho wrote the article consider to be the most impor-tant/intluential sources. Track those articles downusing the alphabetical journals list mentioned above.

ConclusionGiven that research is at the heart of all effective

public relations campaigns and activities, the emer-gence of Google Scholar onto the public relations land-scape represents one of the most important researchadvances ever, Hopefully databases like GoogleScholar will become more common, and students andprofessionals will become more comfortable readingscholarly sources rather than the many predigested,and often biased. Web-based sources located on theWorld Wide Web,

The trend toward more reliable information isrefreshing and I hope long-lived. Better public rela-tions will only ensue when practitioners and acade-micians are better informed and draw on reliablescientific research rather than anecdotes and advicefrom biased parties. The Web can be a great resourcefor finding quick facts, or summaries of complicatedideas on a university professor's Web pages. But themajority of the information found on the Web has notbeen placed there to meet the research needs of pub-lic relations practitioners and has not been edited orpeer reviewed. The information on the Web has beenplaced there to meet the needs of organizations.

In public relations, the time has come to "Stand onthe shoulders of giants," as the slogan on the GoogleScholar browser window exclaims. What GoogleScholar makes clear is that the greatest researchadvance in historv will not be remembered as theInternet, but access to scholarly databases. Hopefully,in the near future, more professionals will begin toturn to primary research to conduct better publicrelations. wa

Michael L. Kent is an Assistant Professor In the School ofCommunication. Western Michigan University. Kent teachesundergraduate and graduate public relations coursesand conducts research on public relations, new technol-ogy, international communication, and dialogue. School ofCommunication.Western Michigan University; 300 Sprau Tower; 1903 W.Michigan Avenue: Kalamazoo. Ml 49008-5318Telephone: (269) 353-1772 E-mail: MKent@WMich.edu

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