Rule #1 of using Google Scholar to do research for your class assignments: never pay for an article. Rule #2 of using Google Scholar to do research for your class assignments: never, ever pay for an article!

In many cases, links to full text scholarly articles (like the kind that Google Scholar finds) are through subscription sources. The library pays for subscriptions to many of these sources already so that you, as a WOU student, can access them for free. But Google Scholar doesn’t know you’re a WOU student, and so it will often ask you to pay for the full text of the article results it provides.

That is, unless you tell Google Scholar you are a WOU student! You do this by changing your “Library links” settings in Google Scholar. Want to see how to change these settings? Watch this short video.

Once you change this setting, Google will recognize you as a WOU student and will show you “Find It @ WOU” links with your results. Get more info & tips for searching Google Scholar here.