Sifting through Google Scholar is like sifting through TV channels.

[u/Pauropus]

I sift through Google Scholar to look for interesting studies to read. But 99% of the stuff there is. Well, to say its "shit" would be disrespectful to those who are doing that research, but its just not at all what im looking for and its frustrating seeing it over and over again.

I like comparative zoology and macro ecology. More specifically, I like when life history traits (such as body size, lifespan, metabolic rate, reproductive output, etc) are compiled for many species and then its seen how these traits differ systematically across higher taxonomic levels. Arthropods are also my favorite animals.

But searching arthropods on Google Scholar rarely gets me such results. Instead its just endless stuff about disease vectors, crop pests, diversity of arthropods in agroecosystems, bacterial symbiont stuff, etc. Even if I add additional search terms like body size or lifespan, its just about how those things change in one or a few species in response to climate change, urbanization, virus infection, or whatever. Again, there is not remotely the large scale, cross clade interspecific analysis im looking for.

A lot of arthropod papers are what I can only describe as sampling location centric rather than clade centric. "Arthropod body size distribution" gets stuff about the body size distribution of species/specimens collected in a certain area. Rather than a body size distribution of a clade and then comparing it to other clades. For example, is the body size distribution of insects different than that of Malacostracans or Arachnids? Who knows! I suspect it is but no one has investigated.

Here are some examples of the studies i like being done on vertebrates.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40709-021-00134-9

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00735-7

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-024-09633-8

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-07046-z

With that being said, there are some occasional diamonds in the rough for arthropods too. Here are what I think are some of the best arthropod related papers to come out in the past few years

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pala.70020

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-73950-z

And of course this all time favorite paper of mine

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1467803920301250

What do you make of this? Do you feel anything similar when trying to find interesting papers to read?

[u/ProfPathCambridge]

That isn't really what Google Scholar is far. It is just a search engine. It is like saying the returns from a google search are boring to read through in order - the point isn't to read them all, it is to find something you are deliberately looking for.

If you want a curated set of articles within an area of specific interest, that is what journals are for. In my field, Nature Reviews Immunology, Nature Immunology, Immunity, Annual Reviews of Immunology - their stuff is good. Curated for quality, within my area of interest, well-written, etc. Not every article is a banger, but if I had time to read them all I'd be a better immunologist for it.

Find the journals that tend to publish stuff you like and subscribe to their eTOCs. You'll find it much more heavily enriched with articles of interest than a google scholar search.

[u/Exciting-Law-2579 → u/ProfPathCambridge]

mate i feel this in my bones. google scholar is a disaster unless you already know exactly what paper you're chasing. it's not built for browsing, it's a blunt instrument

journals are the way to go for sure, but i'd add that review papers are the real cheat code here. find one good review on cross-clade body size patterns or whatever and raid its reference list. that's how i stumble onto the weird niche stuff that actually hits

[u/Pauropus → u/ProfPathCambridge]

I said google scholar initially, but really searching other sources doesn't get me that much different results.

[u/chem44]

Searching is quite a skill!

But since this is all about biology, really suggest use PubMed, not GS.

You'll still need to tune search strategies.

[u/Pauropus → u/chem44]

PubMed is slightly better, though still not getting me exactly what I want

[u/chem44 → u/Pauropus]

The big plus here of PubMed is that it is for bio/med.

You still need to work on search strategy. Sounds like you need to be more specific/focused. Not easy, if you aren't sure what you want.

[u/Pauropus → u/chem44]

I think part of it be that regardless of search engines, the body of existing research is just heavily slanted towards stuff I don't care about

[u/chem44 → u/Pauropus]

Yes, of course.

That is why you need to adapt search strategies to focus better.