The Search Principle blog

A physician up for promotion and tenure asked if Google Scholar could be used with confidence to see who had been citing him. The gold standard in citation tracking and impact factors (the field of bibliometrics) is still the ISI Web of Knowledge (WoK). WoK’s strengths are high standards and rigorous content selection. However, it is accessible to subscribers only and does not track books as well as it tracks articles.

Google Scholar tracks books and articles, but its standards are much lower than WoK (ie. duplication of results, and inflated numbers). Librarians and researchers must learn to live with lowered bibligraphic standards brought on by open access. Open access trumps bibliographic control in the new web ecology.

I am still waiting to hear whether MEDLINE will do selective indexing of open access sites in 2006. I expect the WoK or Web of Science to follow suit with a similiar announcement this year.

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blogger

In the spirit of quick & easy access to medical information, watch for a monthly list of tips and tricks here called “Medical search for dummies”. Time-saving tips and “pearls” will be shared for busy physicians.

1. Basic Googling the easy way! Soople.com, though not affiliated with Google, will help you refine your search tasks and teach you the commands. Easy.

2. Use quotes for phrases in Google as in “myocardial infarction”. By using quotes, Google will look for your term as a phrase (and not as two separate words).

3. Be precise. In Google Scholar, use the advanced search. Instead of using diagnosis in heart disease, be specific: “thallium scintigraphy” AND “coronary artery”.

Use these tips as your monthly “brush up”. A regular 5-min checkup with Dr. Search.

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blogger

Top Five 2005 Search Trends in Medicine

1. Blogging in medicine – online journaling, blogsearch, user-generated content
2. Open access – repository search, Google Scholar – Books, Scirus, wiki-med
3. Daily alerting – “pushed” content, RSS feeds, podcasts, del.icio.us
4. Digital multimedia – audio, podcasting, videocasting (live – very cool)
5. Online medical education – “on the go”, handhelds, telehealth.

This has been a great first year blogging about the evolution of search. Stay tuned here next week for some predictions for 2006. Who knows? Google Medicine may even be in the mix. Happy new year, all.

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blogger

Some further explication of Google Medicine:

Google Medicine and open access (OA): team players in knowledge-based healthcare – by Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical librarian

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blogger

Numerous medical portals exist already. In no particular order, try: NHS (U.K.) SumSearch (U.S.), Trip (three free searches only), OMNI and Entrez – at the NLM. Take a look at the article at Wikipedia Medicine Portal which provides some basic information. However, physicians search Yahoo, MSN and Google the most.

Can you recommend any other portals?

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blogger

Who in search is doing the most for medicine? Compare interfaces and content here: Yahoo Medicine and MSN Search “Medicine”. Yahoo provides a directory; MSN very little. Google has a directory for medicine and Google Scholar.

No one wants to hand a monopoly to Google. However, the reason for the suggestion of Google Medicine seems obvious: 1) physicians already use Google more than other tools; 2) Google has revealed its interest in medicine (see Google your genes).

Being able to search across all digital content in medicine using one interface is the point of Google Medicine. How about Google Best Evidence? That’d do.

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blogger

The publication of the How Google is changing medicine editorial in the December 24th, 2005 BMJ has resulted in e-mails being sent to me from physicians in India, Pakistan and eastern Europe. Thank you for your interest in Google Medicine. While I cannot answer all of these e-mails, I will put some further thoughts here soon.

Happy holidays

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blogger

BMJ published my editorial How Google is changing medicine for its Christmas issue. I tried to look at the major events that shaped search in medicine in 2005, and in particular Google’s impact on search. I was unable to describe the year’s events in detail. Merry Christmas to all. As I said two days ago, I will be reviewing the year’s events in search later next week. In the meantime, all the best for the holidays.

Dean Giustini
UBC Google scholar blogger

In any analysis of Web search, many of the issues/trends begin to merge. A good example comes this week in Nature’s Wikipedia vs. Britannica article which found that there was no significant difference between these two sources in terms of accuracy of fifty (50) science entries. Some medical entries include Dolly (cloned sheep), Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD), lymphocyte, prion, Vesalius, West Nile Virus. For these topics, Wikipedia had slightly more errors than Britannica.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales suggests in Nature’s Weekly Podcast that “As we grow the wikipedia community, information specialists and librarians are needed to assess the accuracy, readability and scope of the entries…” To Wikipedia: hire some librarians!

Keep in mind that regular Google can be used to find Wikipedia entries on medicine; Scholar cannot.

Dean Giustini
UBC Google Scholar blogger

While digital copyright and fair dealing (also “fair use” in U.S. copyright law) issues are argued by lawyers on both sides, the scanning of books in Google’s Print Project continues. Anyone interested in viewing the progress of this digitization project can throw some keywords into Google Book Search.

Meanwhile in Google Scholar, do a domain search to see snippets of some of these digitized items. Have a look at this search on “medicine and inurl:google”.

The ability to see and/or browse bits of out of print medical titles, and those of historic significance (ie. classic works) is exciting for researchers needing access to this material. (Some librarians are suggesting it might lower libraries’ ILL costs because researchers can see enough of the title to ILL it, or not.)

For a different type of online monographic experience, try browsing and magnifying the classic anatomy book Vesalius’ Fabbrica available digitally from the British Library (scroll down, lower right).

UBC Google Scholar blogger
Dean Giustini