Google Scholar to overshadow them all? Comparing the sizes of 12 academic search engines and bibliographic databases

The visibility of academic articles or conference papers depends on their being easily found in academic search engines, above all in Google Scholar. To enhance this visibility, search engine optimization (SEO) has been applied in recent years to academic search engines in order to optimize documents and, thereby, ensure they are better ranked in search pages (i.e., academic search engine optimization or ASEO). To achieve this degree of optimization, we first need to further our understanding of Google Scholar’s relevance ranking algorithm, so that, based on this knowledge, we can highlight or improve those characteristics that academic documents already present and which are taken into account by the algorithm. This study seeks to advance our knowledge in this line of research by determining whether the language in which a document is published is a positioning factor in the Google Scholar relevance ranking algorithm. Here, we employ a reverse engineering research methodology based on a statistical analysis that uses Spearman’s correlation coefficient. The results obtained point to a bias in multilingual searches conducted in Google Scholar with documents published in languages other than in English being systematically relegated to positions that make them virtually invisible. This finding has important repercussions, both for conducting searches and for optimizing positioning in Google Scholar, being especially critical for articles on subjects that are expressed in the same way in English and other languages, the case, for example, of trademarks, chemical compounds, industrial products, acronyms, drugs, diseases, etc.

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Web Search Engines - Not Yet a Reliable Replacement for Bibliographic Databases

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice ◽

10.18438/eblip29378 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 85-87

Author(s):

Emma Hughes

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Social Services ◽

Search Engines ◽

English Language ◽

Web Search ◽

Boolean Logic ◽

Bibliographic Databases ◽

Quality Of Reporting ◽

Health And Social Care ◽

Web Search Engines

A Review of: Bates, J., Best, P., McQuilkin, J., & Taylor, B. (2017) Will web search engines replace bibliographic databases in the systematic identification of research? The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 43(1), 8-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2016.11.003 Abstract Objective - To explore whether web search engines could replace bibliographic databases in retrieving research. Design - Systematic review. Setting - English language articles in health and social care; comparing bibliographic databases and web search engines for retrieving research published between January 2005 and August 2015, in peer-reviewed journals and available in full-text. Subjects - Eight bibliographic databases: ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts), CINAHL Plus (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), LISA (Library and Information Science Abstracts), Medline, PsycInfo, Scopus, SSA (Social Services Abstracts), and SSCI (Social Sciences Citation Index) and five web search engines: Ask, Bing, Google, Google Scholar, Yahoo. Methods - A literature search via the above bibliographic databases and web search engines. The retrieved results were independently appraised by two researchers, using a combination of tools and checklists, including the PRESS checklist (McGowan et al., 2016) and took guidance on developing search strategies from the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (2009). Main Results - Sixteen papers met the appraisal requirements. Each paper compared at least one bibliographic database against one web-search engine. The authors also discuss findings from their own search process. Precision and sensitivity scores from each paper were compared. The results highlighted that web search engines do not necessarily use Boolean logic and in general have limited functionality compared to bibliographic databases. There were variances in the way precision scores were calculated between papers, but when based on the first 100 results, web search engines were similar to some databases. However, their sensitivity scores were much weaker. Conclusion - Whilst precision scores were strong for web search engines, sensitivity was lacking; therefore web search engines cannot be seen as a replacement for bibliographic databases at this time. The authors recommend improving the quality of reporting in studies regarding literature searching in academia in order for reliable comparisons to be made.

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Intoxicação Alimentar: Um problema de Saúde Pública

ID on line REVISTA DE PSICOLOGIA ◽

10.14295/idonline.v12i42.1373 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 12 (42) ◽

pp. 894-906

Author(s):

Nicole Blanco Bernardes ◽

Larissa De Souza Facioli ◽

Maria Luzia Ferreira ◽

Raissa De Moura Costa ◽

Ana Cristina Fonseca de Sá

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Food Poisoning ◽

Google Scholar ◽

Bibliographic Databases ◽

Salmonella Spp ◽

The People ◽

Basic Sanitation

Este trabalho foi escrito devido a importância de apresentar maior conhecimento as pessoas, não somente da área da saúde, da importância do cuidado com os alimentos para evitar o aumento do número de ocorrência de casos de toxinfecção alimentar, principalmente pela Salmonella spp. Dentro da contaminação do alimento pode-se ter a infecção, intoxicação e a toxinfecção alimentar, nos três tipos há diversos fatores que facilitam a ocorrência desses casos, que vão desde a precariedade no saneamento básico até a falta de cuidado e fiscalização dos alimentos, Diferenciando intoxicação, de infecção e de toxinfecção alimentar, mostrar os alimentos, microrganismos e os sintomas mais frequentes, quais os meios de contaminação, o papel da vigilância sanitária, as buscas foram realizadas em duas bases de dados bibliográficos, sendo estes SciELO (Scientific Eletronic Libray Online) e Google Acadêmico,foram selecionados artigos do período de 1996 a 2018. FOOD POISONING A PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEMAbstractThis work was published because of the importance of the people with the highest number of cases reporting food poisoning cases, especially Salmonella spp. Contamination of food can be an interference, poisoning and food poisoning, several, several factors that facilitate the absence of cases, ranging from a precariousness in basic sanitation to a lack of care and inspection of food, differentiation intoxication, of infection and food toxinfection, such as food, microorganisms and the most frequent symptoms, such as means of contamination, the role of sanitary surveillance, as the searches were exposed in two bibliographic databases, these being SciELO and Google Scholar, were included in the period from 1996 to 2018.

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Locating the Best Available Research

Clinician's Guide to Evidence-Based Practices ◽

10.1093/med:psych/9780190621933.003.0004 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 49-68

Author(s):

John C. Norcross ◽

Thomas P. Hogan ◽

Gerald P. Koocher ◽

Lauren A. Maggio

Keyword(s):

Behavioral Health ◽

Search Engines ◽

Information Sources ◽

Research Evidence ◽

Bibliographic Databases ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Online Search ◽

Medical Subject Headings ◽

Controlled Vocabularies ◽

Test Information

This chapter reviews unfiltered information sources, which contain “virtually everything” published, without filter or fetter. Unfiltered information can be found in a wide variety of online search tools and bibliographic databases, such as MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and CINAHL, and is generally the basis for all other kinds of research evidence. This chapter also introduces specialized evidence-based search engines. A weakness of unfiltered information is that it needs to be analyzed and synthesized, which can prove time-consuming. To facilitate the retrieval of unfiltered information, the chapter describes the advanced approach of using controlled vocabularies such as medical subject headings (MeSH). The chapter concludes by covering resources for accessing evidence on behavioral health tests and measures, including test reviews, test information databases, and test publishers.

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An evaluation of Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar citations in operations management

The International Journal of Logistics Management ◽

10.1108/ijlm-04-2019-0110 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (4) ◽

pp. 1039-1053 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Karen Chapman ◽

Alexander E. Ellinger

Keyword(s):

Operations Management ◽

Search Engines ◽

Journal Article ◽

Research Impact ◽

Google Scholar ◽

Impact Factors ◽

Content Type ◽

English Language Journal ◽

Citation Counts ◽

Number Of Citations

Purpose Ongoing deliberation about how research productivity should be measured is exacerbated by extensive disparity between the number of citations for scholarly works reported by commercial academic search engines and Google Scholar (GS), the premier web crawling service for discovering research citations. Disparities identified in citation comparison studies have also led to disagreement about the value of the higher number of citations for social sciences and business scholarly articles consistently reported by GS. The purpose of this paper is to extend previous database citation comparison studies by manually analyzing a sample of unique GS citations to a leading operations management journal (i.e. citations found only in GS and not the commercial search engines) to reveal just where these additional citations are coming from. Design/methodology/approach In addition to comparing citation counts for the three databases, unique GS citation data for the sample of journal articles was manually captured and reviewed. The authors’ approach provides a much more in-depth examination of the provenance of GS citations than is found in previous studies. Findings The findings suggest that concerns about the value of unique GS citations may not be warranted since the document types for the unique GS citing documents identified in the analysis are dominated by familiar scholarly formats. Predominantly authentic and validated journal publications, dissertations, conference papers, and book and book chapters accounted for the large majority of the unique GS citations analyzed. Practical implications The study lends further credence to contentions that the use of citations reported in GS is appropriate for evaluating research impact in disciplines where other formats beyond the English-language journal article are valued. Originality/value Developing a more informed understanding of the provenance of unique GS citations in the authors’ field is important because many scholars not only aspire to publish in elite journals with high impact factors based on citation counts provided by commercial databases to demonstrate quality, but also report the larger number of citations for their publications that are reported by GS to demonstrate impact. The in-depth manual analysis suggests that GS provides a more nuanced and comprehensive representation of research impact and international scope than the commercial databases.

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Scientific journals still matter in the era of academic search engines and preprint archives

Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology ◽

10.1002/asi.24326 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 71 (10) ◽

pp. 1218-1226 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Lanu Kim ◽

Jason H. Portenoy ◽

Jevin D. West ◽

Katherine W. Stovel

Keyword(s):

Search Engines ◽

Scientific Journals ◽

Academic Search

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On Applying Metamorphic Testing: An Empirical Study on Academic Search Engines

2019 IEEE/ACM 4th International Workshop on Metamorphic Testing (MET) ◽

10.1109/met.2019.00010 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Stevao Alves de Andrade ◽

Italo Santos ◽

Claudinei Brito Junior ◽

Misael Junior ◽

Simone R.S. de Souza ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Empirical Study ◽

Search Engines ◽

Metamorphic Testing ◽

Academic Search

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Ranking by Relevance and Citation Counts, a Comparative Study: Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, WoS and Scopus

Future Internet ◽

10.3390/fi11090202 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 202 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Rovira ◽

Codina ◽

Guerrero-Solé ◽

Lopezosa

Keyword(s):

Search Engine ◽

Search Engines ◽

Web Of Science ◽

Growth Potential ◽

Google Scholar ◽

Unexpected Finding ◽

Ranking Algorithms ◽

Microsoft Academic ◽

Citation Counts ◽

The Impact

Search engine optimization (SEO) constitutes the set of methods designed to increase the visibility of, and the number of visits to, a web page by means of its ranking on the search engine results pages. Recently, SEO has also been applied to academic databases and search engines, in a trend that is in constant growth. This new approach, known as academic SEO (ASEO), has generated a field of study with considerable future growth potential due to the impact of open science. The study reported here forms part of this new field of analysis. The ranking of results is a key aspect in any information system since it determines the way in which these results are presented to the user. The aim of this study is to analyze and compare the relevance ranking algorithms employed by various academic platforms to identify the importance of citations received in their algorithms. Specifically, we analyze two search engines and two bibliographic databases: Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic, on the one hand, and Web of Science and Scopus, on the other. A reverse engineering methodology is employed based on the statistical analysis of Spearman’s correlation coefficients. The results indicate that the ranking algorithms used by Google Scholar and Microsoft are the two that are most heavily influenced by citations received. Indeed, citation counts are clearly the main SEO factor in these academic search engines. An unexpected finding is that, at certain points in time, Web of Science (WoS) used citations received as a key ranking factor, despite the fact that WoS support documents claim this factor does not intervene.

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How to measure fatigue among pilots?

Zbornik Veleučilišta u Rijeci ◽

10.31784/zvr.6.1.7 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 13-21

Author(s):

Andrej Jerman ◽

Maja Meško

Keyword(s):

Content Analysis ◽

Literature Review ◽

Case Studies ◽

Qualitative Data ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Google Scholar ◽

Aviation Industry ◽

Subjective Fatigue ◽

Objective Tests ◽

Academic Search

Fatigue represents a major problem in aviation. Therefore, it is important to identify fatigue among pilots early enough before an incident or an accident occurs. The aim of our study has been to conduct a literature review on measurements of fatigue among pilots; to find out which measurements are used to recognize fatigue and what the results of conducted studies are with the focus on the usefulness of tests for measuring fatigue. The findings are based on meta-analysis. For the purpose of our study, we have used electronic databases Google Scholar, Emerald, MedLit and Academic Search Complete. The content analysis of the articles has been used to summarize and compare qualitative data. The results obtained show that tests for measuring fatigue can be divided into two groups, objective tests and subjective tests. Pilots’ subjective fatigue is mostly evaluated using Samn-Perelli fatigue scale, which is widely used in the aviation industry and it provides data for comparison. The contribution of our study is the widened understanding of fatigue measuring and usefulness of these measurements among pilots. The findings of our research are descriptive in nature. Further studies should be focused on deeper investigation of this topic and could include case studies of fatigue among pilots with qualitative data.

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Entamoeba histolytica Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) Agents that Infect Humans and Some Other Mammals: A Review

E3S Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/e3sconf/202015101019 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 151 ◽

pp. 01019

Author(s):

Junaidi Junaidi ◽

Umi Cahyaningsih ◽

Trioso Purnawarman ◽

Hadri Latif ◽

Etih Sudarnika ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Entamoeba Histolytica ◽

Search Engines ◽

Neglected Tropical Diseases ◽

Morbidity And Mortality ◽

Google Scholar ◽

Intestinal Lumen ◽

High Morbidity ◽

Tropical Diseases

Amoebiasis caused by Entamoeba histolytica is an important issue in world public health because it is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Entamoeba histolytica is the only species of its genus that commonly causes mild irritation, injury, to inflammation of the walls of the colon and cecum. In some cases, parasites also invade other organs, especially the liver, lungs, kidneys, and brain. Methods: Our article search uses the help of four search engines namely Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, and Springer. Results: Entamoeba histolytica is not easily transmitted from animals to humans, due to the fact that this parasite rarely encysts in the intestinal lumen of animals which is an important factor in the transmission of this parasite. And conversely, subclinical amebiasis in humans acts as the dominant host for transmission of this parasite either from human to human or from human to animal.

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