¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 A little over a month ago I attended a Google Scholar workshop on what it is and how to create your profile. It was an eye-opening experience, mostly because it made me aware that I have absolutely nothing available to go on my profile! I’m still pretty young and new in the academia scene, so that’s not surprising.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 What I learned is that Google Scholar is an algorithm-based scholarly journal. It’s free to use and available to anyone who wants it. It exists in opposition to databases like Scopus or Web of Science. Those are all human-curated. There are some problems with having it based on algorithms – it can be inaccurate and searching for articles can be tedious.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 The workshop helped us through building our own profiles. It was here that I realized I have absolutely nothing available. To be honest, I’d be surprised if any of my random papers that I wrote as an undergrad a few years ago were on there. However, an older professor was there, built his profile, and actually saw a bunch of his articles for over a few decades. So it does work!

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 It’s a good tool for keeping track of your own scholarly articles, or for following other scholars in your field. For some of us, it won’t be that useful yet, but it’s never too early to start.