Libraries & Librarians

Report: Between Google Scholar and ChatGPT: How Economics and Business Students Conduct Research in 2026

October 14, 2026

From ZBW (Leibniz Information Centre for Economics) MediaTalk:

Students in economics and business studies today draw on a wide range of information environments when searching for academic literature. Google Scholar, library catalogues and generative AI are part of their everyday research routines. But what role do traditional subject-specific databases still play? And how well do students manage to find information, assess its quality and use it correctly in an academic context?

These questions are at the heart of our new study (in German) „Zwischen Google Scholar und ChatGPT – Wie Wirtschaftsstudierende heute recherchieren“ (“Between Google Scholar and ChatGPT – How economics and business students conduct research today”). Between March and May 2026, we conducted an online survey of 908 economics and business students at German universities.

Research habits are shifting
The results show, first of all, that independent literature searching is routine for the vast majority of the surveyed students: 88.3 per cent have searched for literature or specialist information on their own, either frequently or occasionally. General search engines remain the most widely used tools, with 91.3 per cent of those with research experience using Google, Google Scholar or similar services sometimes or often.

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Despite all the attention currently focused on generative AI, the ZBW study also shows that fundamental challenges in academic research persist. 62.5 per cent of respondents find it difficult to access the full text of academic publications, and more than half (53.6 per cent) have difficulty judging whether a search result is relevant to their research question.