An Evidence-Based Review of Academic Web Search Engines, 2014-2016: Implications for Librarians’ Practice and Research Agenda

Academic web search engines have become central to scholarly research. While the fitness of Google Scholar for research purposes has been examined repeatedly, Microsoft Academic and Google Books have not received much attention. Recent studies have much to tell us about the coverage and utility of G...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInformation technology and libraries Vol. 36; no. 2; pp. 7 - 47
Main Author Fagan, Jody Condit
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chicago American Library Association 01.06.2017
Subjects
Arts
Citations
Database searching
Discovery tools
Documents
Federal court decisions
Fitness
Information services
Internet search software
Internet/Web search service
Internet/Web search services
Librarians
Libraries
Library and information science
Lifelong Learning
Literature reviews
Metadata
Methods
Online information service
Online information services
Online searching
Online services
Scholarly communication
Science
Scientific papers
Search engines
Studies
Text search and retrieval software
United States
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Summary:Academic web search engines have become central to scholarly research. While the fitness of Google Scholar for research purposes has been examined repeatedly, Microsoft Academic and Google Books have not received much attention. Recent studies have much to tell us about the coverage and utility of Google Scholar, its coverage of the sciences, and its utility for evaluating researcher impact. But other aspects have been woefully understudied, such as coverage of the arts and humanities, books, and non-Western, non-English publications. User research has also tapered off. A small number of articles hint at the opportunity for librarians to become expert advisors concerning opportunities of scholarly communication made possible or enhanced by these platforms. This article seeks to summarize research concerning Google Scholar, Google Books, and Microsoft Academic from the past three years with a mind to informing practice and setting a research agenda. Selected literature from earlier time periods is included to illuminate key findings and to help shape the proposed research agenda, especially in understudied areas.
ISSN:0730-9295
2163-5226
DOI:10.6017/ital.v36i2.9718