Thank you for sharing this article! It is particularly relevant for colleagues working in developing countries. I recently gave a lecture to some novice researchers in Timor-Leste where English is not their first language, the internet is VERY slow and they are new to searching for evidence...
I introduced them to four 'free' sites (Pubmed, Google Scholar, TRIP and Cochrane) and got them searching their own questions. They all preferred Google Scholar...the interface was familiar to them, it picks up 'grey literature' such as WHO guidelines which Pubmed doesn't...and it is quick..It's good to have some evidence to support this as a potential tool!
Associate Professor Lyndal Trevena
Sydney School of Public Health
Sydney Medical School,
Room 321b, Edward Ford Building (A27)
The University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Ph: +61 2 9351 7788
Fax: +61 2 9351 5049
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-----Original Message-----
From: Evidence based health (EBH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Thomas L. Mead
Sent: Friday, 16 August 2013 5:14 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Retrieving Clinical Evidence: A Comparison of PubMed and Google Scholar for Quick Clinical Searches
On Aug 15, 2013, at 11:21 AM, Ahmed Abou-Setta, MD wrote:
> An interesting paper just came out that rekindles the question on the potential use of Google Scholar in healthcare decision-making.
>
Great! Another paper to go over VERY carefully at our next Reference Librarians' meeting here.
First/quick assumptions:
===> McMaster U. is involved, so I have to take this seriously.
===> They looked at nephrologists searching in Pubmed "vs" nephrologists searching in G-Scholar, so MeSH-based searching is not going to come into play very nicely, except when Pubmed translates the query successfully (which is only a "sometimes" sort of thing). Pubmed will do better with me at the wheel. This is not to imply that I don't love G-Scholar. I do. I used it every day. I just can't explode MeSH terms, use subheadings, limit to publication-type/study design, employ the myriad tricks up my sleeve, download more than one-at-a-time, or properly document my search-strategy & imagine it to be reproducible.
===> The "amount" of articles doesn't necessarily impress me. We know the Google-Scholar is huge. We know that it frequently searches the full-text/PDF itself (which Pubmed won't do) (and which will get good stuff AND lots of noise). We know that the reported number of hits in any sort of Google search is not ever precise.
Anyway, I've gotta print it out, get coffee, hunker down...
Tom Mead
Biomedical Libraries
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
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