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.
Download ReportTranscript 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?) USTLG 21 April 2005 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) USTLG 21 April 2005 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 USTLG 21 April 2005 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 USTLG 21 April 2005 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 USTLG 21 April 2005 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) USTLG 21 April 2005 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 USTLG 21 April 2005 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 +- . USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Advanced search page USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Features needed Limits – date, publication type… controlled indexing more fields – affiliation, report number… truncation More content!! USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Results PDF>HTML Citations Search Web for a paper abstract USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Find in a library (1) library search USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Find in a library (2) choose country USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Find in a library USTLG 21 April 2005 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 USTLG 21 April 2005 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) USTLG 21 April 2005 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) USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Citation searching Google Scholar 7 Citation: Vlasits, T 613 USTLG 21 April 2005 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 USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Comparative searching Side-by-Side Native Search Engines vs Google Scholar (Peter Jacso) http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/scholarly/side-byside2.htm USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Linking USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar Institutional links USTLG 21 April 2005 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. USTLG 21 April 2005 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) USTLG 21 April 2005 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 USTLG 21 April 2005 Google Scholar