Other researchers use internet searches to complement bibliographic databases when looking for articles. One academic at Carleton University recently Tweeted: “I would be lost without Google Scholar-it is the single most important research tool that I use…”. There are distinct advantages and disadvantages of each type of resource, as summarised in Table 1.Īcademics often rely on resources such as Google Scholar when searching for academic information. ), meaning individual bibliographic databases are less comprehensive than resources such as Google Scholar.

These web-based search engines automatically catalogue new academic publications from across the internet and return results sorted by relevance according to an undisclosed algorithm, whereas bibliographic databases are populated via a systematic process based on newly published articles appearing in a selection of journals (e.g. Recently, free-to-use web-based search engines for academic literature, such as Google Scholar, have provided a potential alternative to subscription-based bibliographic databases. Bibliographic databases contain citations for articles published in academic publications and studies can generally be searched for using title, abstract or keyword search terms, and restrictions based on particular publication dates, authors, or journals can be included. Researchers commonly perform searches using bibliographic databases, such as web of science. They may also significantly reduce resource requirements for such searches and therefore represent a significant increase in efficiency. These methods substantially increase transparency and repeatability when searching online resources. Citations from web-based search engines can then be integrated into review procedures along with those from traditional online bibliographic databases. Here, we describe novel methods for downloading results from searches of websites and web-based search engines into comprehensive databases as citations using free-to-use software. Whilst bibliographic databases typically allow users to extract search results as citations in bulk, several other key resources, such as Google Scholar and organisation websites, do not allow this: citations must be extracted individually, which is often prohibitively time consuming. Indeed, such transparency is a cornerstone of systematic review methodology. Often, systematic reviewers wish to document their searches for transparency or later screening. Other resources, such as Google Scholar, identify academic articles by using search engines that crawl the internet for potentially relevant information. Web of Science Core Collections, which indexes articles published in selected journals. The majority are bibliographic databases that catalogue published research in an iterative, semi-automated manner, e.g.

Many online search facilities allow searching for academic literature.

Rapid search engine