Can Google Scholar be described as a bibliographic database?
No. Google Scholar is a bibliographic search engine rather than a bibliographic database. In order to qualify as a database Google Scholar would need to have stable identifiers for its records, and make sure that no records will be removed.
Is Google Scholar a scholarly source?
No. Google Scholar is an academic search engine, but the records found in Google Scholar are scholarly sources.
Does Google Scholar compile peer-reviewed sources only?
No. Google Scholar collects research papers from all over the web also including grey literature and non-peer reviewed papers and reports.
Do I have to pay to use Google Scholar?
Google Scholar does not provide any full text content itself, but links to the full text article on the publisher page, which can either be open access or pay walled content. Google Scholar, however, tries to provide links to free versions of the article e.g. on institutional repositories if possible.
