Google Scholar is adding a new feature that allows researchers to conduct a search within the documents that cite to a specific case. This takes its “cited by” function up a notch by allowing you to limit the search to cases or secondary resources that have all cited the same document. I got a note from Google Scholar’s Chief Engineer, Anarag Acharya this morning that laid out some of the details.
Just a quick note to mention that earlier today we added the ability to search within citing articles to Google Scholar. This has been a popular feature request 🙂 It allows you to search the complete text of the set of articles/cases citing a document, It can also be used to limit the results to citations from specific jurisdictions (via the dropdown on search pages or the advanced search page).
A blog post describing this with examples and an illustration is at the Google Scholar Blog
It’s a pretty simple addition, but one that may assist researchers in narrowing the amount of information they need to search in order to find what they are looking for. Here’s a snapshot of the new feature:
It seems that the handful of folks at Google Scholar are still listening to their users. So, if you have any further suggestions, you should contact them through their suggestions page.