Academic Search Engines

ONLINE SEARCHING FOR PROFESSIONAL OR ACADEMIC PURPOSES PART IISeptember 2007L. Codina. UPF Interdisciplinary CSIM MasterAcademic Search Engines*

L. Codina. UPF Interdisciplinary CSIM Master

SummaryAcademic Search Engine CharacterizationInputs:Information sourcesKind of documentsOutput:Types of retrieved documents (access)Main academic search EnginesGoogle ScholarScirusLive Academic

September 2007L. Codina. UPF Interdisciplinary CSIM Master*


Inputs: Information sourcesTypology of institutions or corporations web sites indexed by the A-SEUniversities (.edu sites)Research centres (NASA, RAND, etc.)Government (sites related with science, technology, etc.)Journal and book publishersLibrary collectionsDigital repositories (e-prints, e-books, etc.)



Inputs: Typology of documentsWeb pages (and any kind of documents: pdf, word, etc.) published in web sitesArticles of peer review journals (both open access and subscription-based access)Academic works, like dissertations, thesis, etc.PatentsBooksReferences (not the full text document, only the bibliographic reference)



Output: Types of Retrieved Documents The retrieved documents in the search engine results page may be:Free (web pages, open access peer review journal articles, etc.)Free if you are in the campus or connected to the campus network (articles of the peer review journal that are subscribed by your University)Not free: by payment because the journal is not subscribed by your university (articles of the peer review subscription-based journal)References only (not the document: you have to find out the full text document by other ways)



The main Academic-Search EnginesGoogle Scholar (Google)scholar.google.com

Scirus (Elsevier) www.scirus.com

Academic Live (Microsoft) academic.live.comSeptember 2007L. Codina. UPF Interdisciplinary CSIM Master*


Google Scholar - IGoogle ScholarInputs:All sources and types, except patentsSpecial features:Citation analysis, ranking and navigation options



Google Scholar - IISeptember 2007L. Codina. UPF Interdisciplinary CSIM Master*


Scirus - IScirusInputs:All sources and types, except books and referencesSpecial features:The search facilities, the characteristics of the results page, the diversity of sources, the access to full text patents and the total amount of available information



Scirus IISeptember 2007L. Codina. UPF Interdisciplinary CSIM Master*


Live Academic - ILive AcademicInputs:All sources, except patentsSpecial features:Visualization, sort and exportation options in the results page



Live Academic - IISeptember 2007L. Codina. UPF Interdisciplinary CSIM Master*


Ranking by amount of informationScirusGoogle ScholarLive

A simple test. Keyword: hypertextNumber of results in:Scirus:615,695 documentsGoogle Scholar:252,000 documentsLive:12,153 documents



Conclusions - IDatabases vs. search engines: What is the different role of each system?

Academic databases (subscription-based): Indispensable if you need to legitimate your work (for example, for a dissertation or to submit a paper to a peer review journal)If you want to be sure about the state of art in your fieldThe most trustworthy information

Academic Search Engines (free-access):The most up to date informationQuickly and easy access to informationUseful information: more practical, more understandable, more direct and academic-jargon free, etc. (but at your risk)In addition, they contain, partially, the same documents that academic databases (but it is not sure and it is at a very different proportion, depending the field).September 2007L. Codina. UPF Interdisciplinary CSIM Master*


Conclusions - IIAcademic database will be essential for you for the reasons mentioned in previous slide but the crude truth is that Academic Search Engines will make your life more easier.In other words: probably, you will want to use search engine because its easiness, and probably you will not want to use databases because its (relative) difficulty, but you have to use it.So fortunately or unfortunately you will need both September 2007L. Codina. UPF Interdisciplinary CSIM Master*


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Academic Search Engines

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