Pros and Cons Katharine Jackson January 2010 (adapted from the 2009 session)

1. Pros and Cons Katharine Jackson January 2010 (adapted from the 2009 session)

2. Today • Google Scholar offers a very convenient method of retrieving article citations and often the accompanying full text, and is growing in popularity. This session offers tips on using it effectively and extending your search to other sources should Scholar's coverage prove inadequate for your purposes. • The World Wide Web – how useful is it? • Coverage of Google Scholar (GS) • Using Google Scholar to find academic material • How to get the most out of Google Scholar • Pros and Cons in comparison to other sources

3. Welcome to the Web The Internet is the world's largest library.  It's just that all the books are on the floor.  ~John Allen Paulos “Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” Mitchell Kapor When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the World Wide Web.... Now even my cat has its own page.  ~Bill Clinton, 1996 We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true. Robert Wilensky The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.   -- , freelance journalist The Internet is the most powerful magnifier of slack ever invented.  ~Author Unknown

4. Welcome to the Web The world’s biggest haystack

5. Looking for a needle - why start in a haystack?

6. Why do people love Google? • Very fast – it even tells you how fast • Brings up a large number of results • Often has a number of ‘relevant’ results within the first page • Simple interface • It’s free

7. Finding needles – how does Google do it? • Google is an index of web pages • It uses clever algorithms that take into account links from other pages and click throughs • BUT Google are very secretive as to exactly how they do it

8. So why not use it for journal articles?... • Individual articles may not be a web page • Articles may be behind a firewall and how are you going to know? • The sheer amount of results • Are the top results the ‘best result’? • How would you index an article? • Read it? Google doesn’t read • Give it controlled index terms? Google doesn’t have a controlled vocabulary • Be able to see the context? Google is not able to determine context

9. So what did Google do…. • Teamed up with publishers so they let them search behind their firewalls • Modified the algorithm so it excludes non-scholarly material (as defined by Google of course) • Used citations to help relevance • Included library locations for full-text access (Library Link)

10. But what did they not do… • Create controlled vocabularies • Create standardisation of journal names/abbreviations • Give any details of which journals/publishers they included • Give any info on how the system decides what is scholarly • Give an indication of update frequency Still not giving any indication on how it works

11. NB: only in Beta • Launched 18 Nov 2004 but still beta - features change • Developing in tandem with Google Books, which includes digitised texts from Oxford collections and others • In competition with WoK, SCOPUS etc

12. What’s in Google Scholar? “Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.”

13. Content • Access to materials locked behind subscription barriers • Must include abstract • Full-text access requires institutional subscriptions or individual payment, unless open-access • Includes peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, full-text, citations, etc. • Includes OpenURL links to local library holdings - “Library Links” • In Oxford displays as ‘Oxford Full Text’ beside title • Includes citation data BUT no list of publishers that have allowed Google access or publication list

14. Searching • AND implied between words as in normal Google • + to include common words, letters or numbers that Google’s search technology generally ignores • “quote marks” to search for a phrase • minus sign – to exclude from a search • OR for either search term • author: for author search • intitle: to search document title • restrict by date and publication Advanced search screen available

15. A simple example…… Let’s try rhinoceros tusks Context might be • Ecology • Law • Medicine • Art etc

16. Basic search box Advanced search Set up Library Links through Preferences

17. Remember to save Can search for libraries But if on Oxford network it should already be there

18. If we scroll further down the preferences page… we can set up preferences to show links to import citations into different referencing software

19. Basic search box Advanced search Set up Library Links through Preferences

20. Has citation information, related articles and a link through to different versions Shows where the item is a book rather than an article Links through to location in Oxford

21. If we scroll down the page…. Includes citations

22. Search tips to use Advanced search Ability to narrow search for specific publications, dates or authors Narrow down by subject

24. How does it compare to Web of Knowledge and Scopus? Web of Knowledge “One platform for access to objective content and powerful tools that let you search, track, measure and collaborate in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.” Web of Knowledge website Scopus “Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research” Scopus website

25. Can select a subject based database No way of searching full text But can search for specific authors and journals This search only brings up one result!

28. Searching for a specific item.. “Mood state effects of chocolate”, G Parker, I Parker, H Brothie, Journal of Affective Disorders, 92, pg149-159

29. This time choose ‘Advanced search’

30. Can use the title in the exact phrase box

31. Link through to Oxford holdings Link through to a list of articles citing this article

32. Can use the ‘title’ and ‘author’ field

33. Also links through to full text and has the number of times cited as 15 Allows you to refine your search from this page

34. Have to click on ‘add search field to be able to put the author in

35. Has link through to a list of 19 articles Link to see where it is in Oxford Link to full text

36. Differences in Citations • GS had 21 articles citing, WOK had 15 and Scopus had 19. • Google had 10 out of the 19 items that were listed on Scopus and 9 out of the 15 that were listed on WOK. • GS had 8 ‘unique’ items that were not on WOK or Scopus. WOK had 1 unique item and Scopus had 4.

37. Differences in citations • GS uses citation extraction to build links between articles • Already seen in all the databases the ‘cited by’ links which link through to articles that have cited the results But • As different databases have different literature sets the numbers will be different • With GS the most cited articles will be at the top of the results list (which hopefully means the most authorative) but not always the case. • GS also includes non scholarly material as well as books

38. Pros and Cons of Google Scholar Peter Jacso reviewed Google Scholar in 2005 and then revisited it in 2008 in his article “Savvy Searching: Google Scholar Revisted, Online Information Review, 32, no 1 2008,pg 102. This looked at over 100 papers on Google Scholar.

39. Pros • Content has grown since GS started and now GS indexes Elsevier and American Chemical Society. • The Google books project has significantly enhanced the content. • Has started to include content for languages other than English • Has indexed records where no digital full text is available and so can point the researcher to the primary source via document delivery • Library Links is extremely good at identifying sources locally.

40. Cons • Although the content has grown there are still significant gaps in the top ranking journals. • Its search operations has serious flaws for example in the filtering of searches by broad subject or publication year • No official list of what GS actually searches and so no realistic idea of how many records are included. • Coverage seems to be sporadic for example Jacso found that only ¼ of items on Pubmed were available on GS. • There is no idea of currency • Some subjects are covered more than others

41. Further studies….. On citation analysis • Harzing, Anne-Wil K. and Ron van der Wal Google Scholar as a new source for citation analysis Ethics in science and environmental politics, Vol. 8: 61–73, 2008 http://www.int-res.com/articles/esep2008/8/e008p061.pdf • Meho and Wang (2007) (on bibliography)

42. From that article: • as a general rule of thumb, we would suggest that using GS might be most beneficial for 3 of the GS categories: (1) business, administration, finance & economics; (2) engineering, computer science & mathematics; (3) social sciences, arts & humanities. • Although broad comparative searches can be done for other disciplines, we would not encourage heavy reliance on GS for individual academics working in other areas without verifying results with either Scopus or WoS.

43. and Meho & Yang (2007) [found] that GS missed 40.4% of the citations found by the union of WoS and Scopus, suggesting that GS does miss some important refereed citations. It must also be said though that the union of WoS and Scopus misses 61.04% of the citations in GS. Further, Meho & Yang (2007) found that most of the citations uniquely found by GS are from refereed sources. The social sciences, arts and humanities, and engineering in particular seem to benefit from GS’s better coverage of (citations in) books, conference proceedings and a wider range of journals. The natural and health sciences are generally well covered in ISI and hence GS might not provide higher citation counts. In addition, user feedback … seems to indicate that for some disciplines in the natural and health sciences GS’s journal coverage is very patchy.

44. Alternatives to Google Scholar • Web of Knowledge • Scopus • SOLO • Subject specialised federated searches e.g PubMed, Scirus for scientific information.

45. Conclusion • Maintain a balanced diet! • Five a day… • WoK, Scopus, Intute, subject-specific database, Google Scholar…

46. More help Contact the presenters Katharine.jackson@bodley.ox.ac.uk Or your subject librarian (listed on http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/libraries/subjects/librarians) at any time

47. Bibliography: General Reviews 1. Abram, S, ‘Google Scholar: thin edge of the wedge?’, Information Outlook, Vol. 9, 44-46. www.sirsi.com/Pdfs/Company/Abram/StephenAbram_GoogleScholarThin Edge.pdf 2. Giustini, D & Barksy, E, ‘A look at Google Scholar, Pubmed, and Scirus: comparisons and recommendations’, 2005, JCHLA, Vol 26, 85-89. 3. Jasco, P ‘Google Scholar revisited’, Online Inf. Rev., 2008, Vol. 32, 102-114. www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm 4. Jacsó, P., Google Scholar: the pros and the cons. Online Inf. Rev., 2005, Vol. 29, 208-214. 5. Vine, R, ‘Google Scholar coverage of a multidisciplinary field’ Information Processing and Management, Vol. 43, 1121-1132

48. Bibliography: citation analysis 1.Jasco, P, ‘As we may search – comparison of major features of the Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar citation based and citation enhanced databases’, Current Science, Vol. 89, 1537-1547. www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov102005/1537.pdf 2.Yang, K & Meho, L I, ‘Citation analysis: a comparison of Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science’, Proceedings of the 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00008121/01/Yang_citation.pdf