Non-scholarly sites showing up in Google Scholar

[Stacy Pober]

I was looking at Google Scholar search results and noticed some results
that do not normally fit the criteria most people would use for "scholarly
publishing".

The search terms were: nightshade arthritis

7 hits of the first 20 hits are questionable:

#3: Childers, Norman Franklin. *A Diet to Stop Arthritis: The Nightshades
and Ill Health*. Horticultural Publications, 1981.  [Not from a scholarly
press.Author is a PhD who published in peer-reviewed journals, but this is
apparently in the results because it was cited in a scholarly publication.]

#5: Childers, Norman Franklin. *Arthritis, a Diet to Stop it: The
Nightshades, Aging and Ill Health*. Norman F. Childers, 1993.
[Self-published. Cited in a scholarly publication.]

#8: Johnson, Anthony. "Reducing Nightshade Consumption May Improve
Arthritic Symptoms."
[Oddly, this  only seems to exist as a citation in Google Scholar. There's
no source or publisher specified and no link to full text anywhere as far
as I can tell.  It doesn't show up in a normal Google search as an exact
title match.]

#14: Read, Mark Forums. "Thread: Nightshade Foods." [from the site:
anabolicminds.com <http://bit.ly/1izoQUN>  ]

#16: TOP TEN TIPS, "How Deadly Are Nightshades?."  [from the website:
50symptomsgone.com <http://bit.ly/1izoTzM>  ]

#18: Jackson, Steven. "Foods to avoid with arthritis." (2014). [from the
website: global-partnerships.com <  http://bit.ly/1iP6G1Z>]

#20: Windley, Steve. "Dr. Tara Skye Goldin's Newsletter, The Joint Issue
Natural Medicine That Gets Results!." [from the website:
www.taraskyegoldin.com   <http://bit.ly/1iP6y2p>  ]

The results are a little better if I use the search terms: solanine
arthritis
but I still get a few of the non-scholarly links.

It looks like Google Scholar is including any article that is cited in a
scholarly article, including tabloid newspaper articles and some conspiracy
websites.  There are some hits in that list  that are not cited by any
scholarly source, and I can't figure out why those were included in the
results.   I used to recommend Google Scholar to students all the time, and
now I'm a little wary of it.


-- 
Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College Library
Riverdale, NY 10471
stacy.pober at manhattan.edu

============================

To unsubscribe: http://bit.ly/web4lib

Web4Lib Web Site: http://web4lib.org/

2015-09-24
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.nd.edu/pipermail/web4lib/attachments/20150924/8bd7fe6d/attachment.htm>