The relative ineffectiveness of bibliographic search engines

IVAN VALIELA; PAULINA MARTINETTO

BIOSCIENCE

AIBS (American Institute of Biological Science)

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2005 vol. 55 p. 688 - 692

0006-3568

The increasing number of scientific publications has made bibliographic search engines essential tools in all disciplines.  These software-based devices, however, are far from perfect.  Comparisons of software-based bibliographic search engines versus actual complete list of publications by three authors showed that references citations were not generally available pre-1970, effectiveness of recovery was improving but was quite variable, and on average, yielded 36% of the publications.  There was marked year-to-year inconsistency in recovery of titles.  The inconsistency was not explainable by differences in indexing due to journal reputation: there was no evident relationship between search effectiveness and journal impact factor, but percentage of recovery was higher for indexed journals.  Search engines are widely used in bibliographic searches performed for evaluation of researchers, awarding promotions, or assessing journal performance.  Given the ineffectiveness of search engines, their use in making such important personal and institutional decisions needs careful consideration.