Research conducted by researchers from Western University and the famous McMaster University in Canada published last week in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (J Med Internet Res 2013;15(8):e164) has brought into limelight the most appropriate question for clinicians worldwide– Where do I search to get optimum result to get an answer to my clinical queries – in a fast and effective manner so as to get the best evidence based answer – Pubmed or Google Scholar ?
World over there has been an increasing stress on the need for evidence based health care and the daily need of clinicians for a valid information about diagnosis, prognosis , therapy and prevention is estimated to be about up to 5 times a day per in-patient and 2 times for every 3 out-patients ( Osheroffet al. Physicians’ information needs: analysis of questions posed during clinical teaching. Ann Intern Med 1991;114:576-81 ) . With an ever increasing bundle of medical literature clinicians (who are anyway busy ) often require to run quick clinical searches (may be from their smartphones ) to provide accurate information to guide patient care. Google Scholar lately has been gaining in popularity though Pubmed still remains the most widely used resource for medical literature. However Google search as the paper notes ” also indexes articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions from a variety of disciplines and sources including academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other websites. ” Personally I would say for researchers intending to look for evidence for developing and developed nations – where most medical journals are not in Pubmed – google scholar might be a preferred destination.
Skipping the very interesting methodology section (which I must confess I am in awe of on accout of it being really really well thought of and full-proof) the results throw off :
“Compared with PubMed, the average search in Google Scholar retrieved twice as many relevant articles (PubMed: 11%; Google Scholar: 22%; P<.001). Precision was similar in both databases (PubMed: 6%; Google Scholar: 8%; P=.07). Google Scholar provided significantly greater access to free full-text publications (PubMed: 5%; Google Scholar: 14%; P<.001).”
Thus leading to the author’s conclusion that , ” For quick clinical searches, Google Scholar returns twice as many relevant articles as PubMed and provides greater access to free full-text articles.”
This clearly draws the battle lines between Pubmed and Google Scholar in terms of clinical searches (with gooogle scholar as the winner )but opens to various other questions
What is the grade of evidence retrieved from Pubmed and Google Scholar ?
Will the difference be the same in settings other than nephrology where the study was conducted or in developing nations ?
Would we encounter similar results when we intend to search for purposes other than quick clinical searches where the intention is being exhaustive and not quick ?
Questions asked , now have to look for answers ….. !! Anyone knows ?
