The Fraud

The whole purpose of a research paper is to explain the results found in different studies. In order to help people have easy accessibility for finding different studies, google created a website called google scholar. On the surface, google scholar seems like it would be extremely helpful for students especially when dealing with a research paper. There are millions of studies that already have the work cited written out, results stated clearly, and links to hundreds of other related sources in order to help the student find whatever they are looking for. However, google scholar fails to truly succeed in achieving the overall goal of helping demonstrate research.

While trying to find the first couple of sources for this research paper, I came to attention. I quickly had to change my topic fast. I was originally going to write about how the Phillies would weaken their defense prior to the 2022 MLB season which ultimately strengthened their overall team. This was due to the added players like Kyle Schwarber who is historically terrible on defense, but he was a key addition to the offensive production. When I typed in “Phillies” into google scholar just to see what would pop up, I was shown an article talking about chemistry as the first search. This is because the article was written by Kiril Streletzky and George D. J. Phillies. If you go past that singular article, you are left with hundreds all written by George D. J. Phillies. There may be students ecstatic over finding his chemist work, but personally I was limited in what I could research. If I was limited in what I could research, imagine how many other kids also had the same issues that I had. Unfortunately, I had a topic I would have been extremely passionate about, but I was forced to switch topics due to google scholar limiting coverage. 

Regardless of the limited content, the language barrier on google scholar is often overlooked. While using Google, in order to switch between different languages one just has to change one setting. This then changes every word to whatever language one changed it to. Since Google Scholar is a specialized search engine from Google, it is thought to work relatively the same way. When changing the language in Google Scholar, the settings are changed to that language, but none of the articles are changed. If they are able to change the contents of Google’s articles, it is shocking that Google Scholar does not also just translate them. Of the few articles already on Google Scholar, the language barrier drastically lowers that number. A search engine made strictly for research is limiting how much research one may do strictly based on the language they speak.

Additionally to the language barrier, the accessibility of each article can limit the amount one’s ability to research. The few times that there is an article that one can use, it is often shut down behind the paywall that blocks researchers from the work. Most schools like Rowan do allow their students to access these websites for no additional cost, but that does not include all of them. While testing out google scholar, the first article of “solar system” was written in 1966. It is blocked by a pay wall of $35.95 for 48 hour access for thirteen pages. With an extremely large amount of information learned about the solar system in the past couple of decades, the information in that article most likely has no revelation or truth anymore. For this essay alone with upwards of ten sources, it could cost over $400. With most of the articles not even being used, a researcher without a university will have to break the bank just to support their claim. 

One of the key features of Google Scholar is that it presents you the citation for the article, and the articles show the researcher their works cited page. On paper this sounds amazing, but there is a huge flaw. According to Penn State University, they made an article talking about the pros and cons of using Google Scholar, “No wonder that authors, journals and the numerical-chronological designations (publication year, volume, issue and starting page numbers) are mis-identified for millions of documents. As a consequence, the citation-matching algorithm of GS is equally unreliable, often yielding excessive and obviously absurd numbers of false positives and false negatives.” Although one may cite a website, by citing it incorrectly, it is still considered plagiarism. Many researchers most likely used those citations listed by Google Scholar without even realizing they are plagiarizing. Also according to the Penn State article on the pros and cons of Google Scholar, they followed the number of citations written for one of their other articles. It was reported that the article was cited a total of 57 times. When entering the article, Google Scholar says that that number is actually 55 times cited, but they can only show 53 times. With every number being different, it shows how Google Scholar gives a rough estimate number. The Google Scholar algorithm used to find these numbers are obviously flawed. If the algorithm cannot correctly get the number of citations, the algorithm most likely messes up the other numbers used in the citations.

Although Google Scholar in theory is a great idea to help researchers, it is extremely counterintuitive to the extreme flaws it has. The limited number of articles affects the variety that one can research and how in depth they want to get. That number can exponentially decrease when implementing the language barrier which Google does not have. If the language barrier does not affect a researcher, they may be limited by the pay wall that blocks a majority of the websites on Google Scholar. Since most schools do pay for a generous amount of websites, the small chance that one can find a website they could use, the citation listed by Google Scholar could be wrong. By dealing with all the issues with Google Scholar, they can give someone a big thank you by causing a researcher to plagiarize their entire paper.

Works Cited

Author links open overlay panelPeter Goldreich, et al. “Q In the Solar System.” Icarus,

Academic Press, 14 Oct. 2002,

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0019103566900510.     

Jasco, Peter. “Citeseerx.ist.psu.edu.” Emerald Insight, 20 June 2008,

  citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=.

Streletzky, Kiril, and George Phillies. “Temperature Dependence of Triton X-100 Micelle Size

and Hydration.” American Chemical Society, 1 Jan. 1995,

pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/la00001a011.