1. What is the purpose of Google Scholar?

Access to scientific and technical information via commercial databases requires a subscription and has a cost depending on usage (time and number of references viewed or downloaded).

Created in 2004, Scholar is a database providing free access to searches for scientific works published in refereed and non-refereed journals, theses, reports, books, online journals, as well as citations for all these works. Works citing publications indexed in Google Scholar are also presented in the database (citation in square brackets before the reference).

Google Scholar's ease of use and free access to a full range of derived functions (including researcher profiles, which may or may not be public, presentation of an author's entire body of work with citations, transfer of information to other scientific production management systems such as "end note",...