Suitability of Google Scholar as a source of scientific information and as a source of data for scientific evaluation—Review of the Literature

Highlights：

• Google Scholar is constantly expanding and includes publishers content as well as content not available in controlled databases.

• Google Scholar provides citations counts that are broader than those covered by controlled databases.

• Google Scholar should be used with controlled databases especially when clinical information retrieval is required.

• Google Scholar is challenging when advanced searching is required.

• Google Scholar does not support data downloads and therefore is difficult to use as a sole bibliometric source.

• Google Scholar lacks quality control and clear indexing guidelines.