World Wide Web

Originality

Computer science

Qualitative research

Value (mathematics)

Sociology

Data science

cons

Information retrieval

Programming language

Machine learning

Social science

Online Information Review

Purpose To identify the pros and the cons of Google Scholar. Design/methodology/approach Chronicles the recent history of the Google Scholar search engine from its inception in November 2004 and critiques it with regard to its merits and demerits. Findings Feels that there are massive content omissions presently but that, with future changes in its structure, Google Scholar will become an excellent free tool for scholarly information discovery and retrieval. Originality/value Presents a useful analysis for potential users of the Google Scholar site.

Google Scholar: the pros and the cons