Google Scholar - what more do users need? Ian Winship Northumbria University Google’s modest mission “Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make.
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Transcript Google Scholar - what more do users need? Ian Winship Northumbria University Google’s modest mission “Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make.
Google Scholar - what more
do users need?
Ian Winship
Northumbria University
Google’s modest mission
“Google's mission is to organize the world's information
and make it universally accessible and useful”
(http://www.google.com/corporate/)
(A thought - how do they make it useful?)
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Google Scholar
Google Scholar’s aims
“Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for
scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers,
theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical
reports from all broad areas of research.
Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide
variety of academic publishers, professional societies,
preprint repositories and universities, as well as
scholarly articles available across the web.”
(http://scholar.google.com/scholar/about.html#about)
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Google Scholar
Content
Types
journal articles - 29 publishers (Crossref project)
preprints - collections, personal Web sites
books
conference papers
abstracts, esp. PubMed, ACM
- all scholarly?
Formats
HTML, PDF, Postscript
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Google Scholar
Major publishers included
American Physical Society
Institute of Physics
Annual Reviews
Association for Computing
Machinery
BioMed Central
Blackwell Publishing
BMJ (British Medical Journal)
Publishing Group
Cambridge University Press
IEEE
Note: no Elsevier
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Publishing
Nature Publishing Group
Oxford University Press
Springer-Verlag
Taylor & Francis
University of Chicago Press
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Google Scholar
Coverage/deficiencies
References
G Scholar
Google
Blackwells
214000
1.6m
REPeC
394000
1.3m
NIH
2m
15m
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Google Scholar
PubMed problem
MYTH: Google Scholar searches Medline
FACT: Google Scholar does not search Medline. It
searches whatever Medline records NLM happened to
give Google. We have no idea when NLM gave
Google the records. We can't anticipate when the
next batch will be delivered and the Google Scholar
database updated.
My results showed that Google Scholar failed to
retrieve any PubMed content after February-March
2004
(http://www.workingfaster.com/sitelines/archives/2005_02.html
#000283)
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Google Scholar
Currency – an example
How current is the indexing?
To answer this question we looked at the most recent
issues of nursing journals at the Blackwell’s site. On
average, Blackwell nursing journals were indexed on
Google Scholar over two-and-a-half months before
they show up in CINAHL.
Chuck Hamaker and Brad Spry
Google Scholar
Serials 18(1), March 2005, 70-72
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Google Scholar
Search features
Boolean – default AND; OR
phrase
author (including
author:name) (with variants)
publication (allowing for varied forms)
title (including
intitle:word)
date
+-
.
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Google Scholar
Advanced search page
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Google Scholar
Features needed
Limits – date, publication type…
controlled indexing
more fields – affiliation, report number…
truncation
More content!!
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Google Scholar
Results
PDF>HTML
Citations
Search Web
for a paper
abstract
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Google Scholar
Find in a library
(1)
library search
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Google Scholar
Find in a library
(2)
choose country
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Google Scholar
Find in a library
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Google Scholar
(3)
Problems
multiple sources
multiple versions of the same work – preprint,
published paper, local copy…
abstract only
payment is requested
Some Athens access problems reported
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Google Scholar
Subject searching
GS Zetoc
SCI
(1981-)
ISI
Proc
Scirus
others
ABS
2
0
1
0
3+6
Crossfire 0
Nimonic
22
1
7
3
90
+105
Metadex 29
Flammability of flame retardant-containing ABS-CPVC
blends
High temperature wear of Nimonic alloys
(Scirus: articles+ web)
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Google Scholar
Name searching
GS
Zetoc SCI
(1981-)
ISI
Proc
Scirus
others
A
Sambell
32
45
26
7
au: 0
“name”
:1+353
8
Inspec
(author
index) 36
Keele U
5590 378
1069
165
2284
+19135
(Zetoc - Keele as venue or publisher)
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Google Scholar
Citation searching
Google Scholar
7
Citation: Vlasits, T
613
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SCI (1981-)
10
Electronic letters 32(7) 1996, 612-
Google Scholar
WoS and Google Scholar
Here we analyze 203 publications, collectively cited by
more than 4000 other publications. We show
surprisingly good agreement between data citation
counts provided by the two services. …Cumulatively,
ISI discovered 4741 references, GoogleScholar found
4045.
Richard K. Belew
Scientific impact quantity and quality:Analysis of two sources of
bibliographic data
arXiv:cs.IR/0504036 v1 11 Apr 2005
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Google Scholar
Comparative searching
Side-by-Side Native Search Engines vs Google
Scholar (Peter Jacso)
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/scholarly/side-byside2.htm
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Google Scholar
Linking
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Google Scholar
Institutional links
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Google Scholar
Cool tools
Toolbar bookmarklet
Search from the toolbar – for various browsers
IngentaConnect highlighter
Shows citations in Google Scholar search results which have full
text on IngentaConnect. Run a search and then click on the
toolbar link to highlight the IngentaConnect results.
Search IngentaConnect via Google Scholar
Highlight words on any web page and click the link, or enter
words into the pop-up box. The search will be executed on
Google but the results will be limited to those available on
IngentaConnect.
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Google Scholar
One answer to my question
a free, easy to use, subject based, deep mining
metasearch service whereby you can easily find
papers, quality websites, books, technical reports,
jobs, industry news, standards, eprints, learning
resources, patents, etc.
(from another USTLG member)
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Google Scholar
Some conclusions
Useful - at an appropriate level – eg undergraduate -
despite deficiencies. Remember: user needs or
wants; exhaustive or sufficient search
Improvement on Google. Users will find it – its easy
to use too.
Can help direct users to library databases/journals.
Is information finding important now or information
using? What is the librarian’s role?
It’s a Beta version - so not finished, so…
Keep watching - it will get better
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Google Scholar