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Publication Tracking : Searching for an Affiliation in Google Scholar

Overview

This page gives tips on how to search for an affiliation in Google Scholar. Click here to access this information as a downloadable PDF.

Click here to access a PDF containing search templates and examples of searching for an affiliation in Google Scholar.

Constructing Your Search

1. Construct a Search Using Affiliation Keywords

Unfortunately Google Scholar does not have a field tag for affiliations. In consequence, you will need to construct your search using affiliation keywords, and combine them with the Boolean OR (or the “|” symbol in Google Scholar), like so:

 

wisconsin|Madison|UW|wi|wisc

 

“|” works the same as a Boolean OR would, in that it will be retrieving publications that mention wisconsin, Madison, UW, wi, or wisc, or all of the terms in them.

 

2. Increase Specificity by Using Quotation Marks

If any of your affiliation keywords are comprised of more than one word, you can use quotation marks to search for the keyword as a phrase. So, for example, searching "young adult" is going to search for that intact phrase, whereas searching young adult, without quotation marks, will look for articles that have young and adult anywhere in the article, regardless of how apart those two words might be in the article (e.g., it could retrieve an article that says, "The young polar bear was now an adult").

So if you wanted to narrow your search to only publications that mention some variation of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and not just Wisconsin, your search could look something like this:

 

“University of Wisconsin Madison”|”University of Wisconsin-Madison”|”UW Madison”

 

This search will only retrieve publications that mention the University of Wisconsin Madison, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW Madison, or all of these terms.

 

3. Limit by Date

You can limit by date by using the date filters on the left-hand side of the page. If you would like to search by a specific date range, you can click “Custom Range.”

 

Screenshot of Google Scholar reuslts page. Date filters are indicated on the left with a red bracket.

Google Scholar has a character limit!

Important: Note that Google Scholar has a limit of only 256 characters for searches

How Do I Interpret These Searches?

Boolean Operators (AND and OR, represented by a space and | in Google Scholar)

OR ("|" in Google Scholar) is used to combine synonyms together. For example, a search of parent|guardian is going to retrieve publications that have the word parent, the word guardian, or both the words parent and guardian in them.

AND (a space in Google Scholar " ") is used to combine concepts together. For example, a search of parent guardian is going to retrieve publications that have BOTH the words parent and guardian in them. If a publication has the word parent, and not the word guardian, your search will not retrieve that publication.

 

Visualization of how Boolean works In the example on the left, I’m using OR to combine two synonyms. This is helpful when your are searching for a concept and you want to combine all keywords related to that concept. parent OR guardian retrieves results that either contain the term parent or guardian, or both the terms parent and guardian The example on the right shows what happens when you combine search terms using the Boolean operator AND. Using AND is most effective when combining different concepts. For example, parent AND guardian only retrieves results that contain BOTH the terms parent and guardian. So, in this example, if an article has the term parent but not the term guardian, your search will not retrieve the article. While using AND retrieves less results than using the Boolean Operator OR.

Quotation Marks " "

These tell Google Scholar to search for two or more words as an intact phrase. So, for example, searching "young adult" is going to search for that intact phrase, whereas searching young adult, without quotation marks, will look for articles that have young and adult anywhere in the article, regardless of how apart those two words might be in the article (e.g., it could retrieve an article that says, "The young polar bear was now an adult").