Rethinking Google Scholar as a Research Tool

Despite the fact that many of our scholars rely on Google Scholar as their preferred discovery tool of choice, Jeffrey Beall recently pointed out in a blog post that because of their indexing of many predatory journals he calls “junk science” one should avoid this tool as a way of locating items on a specific topic. What he calls “junk science” includes specious claims about vaccines discoveries for autism, denial of climate change, far-fetched cosmological discoveries or theories and generally fake science articles that would not pass muster in real peer-reviewed journals. He calls for an overhaul of Google Scholar in providing material that excludes articles from known predatory publishers of junk science.