Google Scholar is a fantastic, free, easy to use resource to search academic, scholarly publications.
Google Scholar aims to be comprehensive, which comes with pros and cons. The pro is that virtually all academic and scholarly publication references and abstracts are included within Google Scholar.
The con is that Google Scholar does not sufficiently screen for quality and therefore includes predatory journals (Google Scholar is Filled with Junk Science). Predatory publishers “perform a fake or non-existent peer review [and] have polluted the global scientific record with pseudo-science”, which they do to be included within Google Scholar. “Most predatory journals are included in Google Scholar.”
This is therefore a reminder of the importance of critically appraising all information, regardless of where or how you found it, or where it is published.
You can also look at Beall’s List of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers, to assist in determining the credibility of a publication.
