There are a few things to keep in mind when making a Google Scholar search out of a PubMed string.
1) there are no Mesh terms in Google Scholar, so eliminate all of those
2) Google Scholar has a character limit. To see if your search fits, type or paste it into the search box and hit Enter. Then go back into the Search box and hit End so you get to the end of the line of text. If your search is cut off, you know you have to eliminate some words.
3) wildcards do not work (e.g. replace* for replace, replacement, replacing, etc. will not work in Google Scholar). However, Google is very intuitive. It usually works well to search on the main term and let Google find the associated terms.
4) quotation marks will keep a phrase together - this works in most databases, including Google Scholar.
5) Boolean logic DOES work and is very important here. Keep the parentheses you used in your PubMed search (to keep synonyms together that were searched with OR), and combine sets of parentheses with AND. For example, this search uses Boolean logic: ("cerebral infarction" OR "brain ischemia" OR "cerebral ischemia") AND (endovascular OR revascularization OR reperfusion) AND (Alteplase OR fibrinolytic OR Streptokinase OR tenecteplase). Remember to capitalize the ORs and ANDs! For more info on Boolean logic, click here: Boolean logic
Need to fit more words in? Here are two advanced searching tips:
- Since Google Scholar automatically puts and AND before each word, you can skip the AND. In fact, you can skip the space between sets within parentheses.
- a | (sometimes called the "pipe") can fill in for OR. You can also skip the space with using the | symbol.
This means that ("cerebral infarction" OR "brain ischemia" OR "cerebral ischemia") AND (endovascular OR revascularization OR reperfusion) AND (Alteplase OR fibrinolytic OR Streptokinase OR tenecteplase)
can become ("cerebral infarction"|"brain ischemia"|"cerebral ischemia")(endovascular|revascularization|reperfusion)(Alteplase|fibrinolytic|Streptokinase|tenecteplase)
