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"Searching for the Right Search - Reaching the Medical Literature"

In the brand new NEJM-article Searching for the Right Search - Reaching the Medical Literature (Jan. 5, 2006, v. 354: 4-7) the author points to data compiled by High Wire Press, that Google provided the majority of referrals to articles in HighWire (56.4%). In fact, PubMed only accounted for 8.7% of the referrals to HighWire articles. While the number of searches conducted in PubMed has increaded to about 70 million/month, there is also an increase in number of people who are referred to PubMed citations and abstracts through Google searches. Comment of Krafty : So, like it or not, we are in a Google searching world. Comment of Oliver Obst: "Heute legen wir unseren Benutzern die MeSH-Suche ans Herz, morgen sind wir froh, wenn sie überhaupt Medline benutzen" My Comment: Further research into origin, habbits and search-behaviour of users is always usefull. It would be good to see how many of those Google users are from Universities who use SFX/Metalib or any other link-resolver software ...... The RUG Groningen can now track the movements of their users, while using SFX-linking from within PubMed, Google Scholar, in fact all SFX-enabled databases and e-journals. If we put that data together with to data from the Publishers, we can get an accurate picture who is doing what and maybe do a better guess what services/actions are needed.

Comments

WoW!ter said…
Guus, bedankt voor de tip, deze zou ik anders gemist hebben. NEJM zit onder mijn radar. Zie mijn rekensommetjes verder maar in mijn Blog http://www.wowter.nl/blog/2006/01/hoe-navigeren-onze-gebruikers.html