Friday 14 November 2008

Ten science search engines

Ten science search engines is actually a list of nine - you are invited to submit suggestions for the tenth via the comments section. The nine are:Scirus, Scitopia.org, Science.gov, ScienceResearch.com, Scitation, WorldWideScience.org, Science Accelerator, TechXtra, and search.optics.org. They all have different coverage and emphasis and none are comprehensive. Which one will work for you depends very much on the subject area. The three I regularly use in this list are Elsevier's  Scirus, TechXtra for engineering (ICBL and Heriot-Watt University) and WorldWideScience.org. Conspicuous by its absence is Google Scholar!
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9 comments:

  1. Hope Leman14 November 2008 at 13:48

    Hi, Karen. Thanks so much for alerting those of us interested in science searching to that list. Very helpful!!

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  2. Karen Blakeman14 November 2008 at 16:22

    Hi Hope, Many thanks for the positive feedback. Heriot-Watt do a lot of good stuff in this area so it is worth monitoring their blog "spineless?" at http://hwlibrary.wordpress.com/

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  3. Lisa18 November 2008 at 19:15

    I think www.nextbio.com belongs on the list because it not only does an excellent job searching through publications, it searches actual clinical results and experimental data.

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  4. Karen Blakeman18 November 2008 at 19:25

    Hi Lisa,

    Many thanks for the alert on Nextbio. Looks very interesting. I like the suggestions it comes up with when I start entering search terms and the tag cloud on the results page. Both are excellent ways of proposing alternative approaches to your search. I'll have a more in depth look at it once I am back from my travels.

    Karen

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  5. AltSearchEngines » Blog Archive » Kudos to Karen Blakeman and Science Search19 November 2008 at 16:24

    [...] Many thanks to Karen Blakeman for her recent post on Ten Science Search Engines: [...]

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  6. Science portals: It’s about diversity and hope » Federated Search Blog20 November 2008 at 04:53

    [...] wrote another blog article, just today, exploring some of the Ten Science Search Engines discussed in yet another blog article (which I’ll get to in a little bit.) In researching [...]

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  7. Search user29 November 2008 at 22:21

    Hi Karen,

    Very useful list, thanks for sharing it. I am curious, why did you select the 3 search sites that you did? Why do you prefer science.gov over scitopia, specifically? I always thought scitopia had the best sources. Either way, I am glad you didnt list Google Scholar!

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  8. Karen Blakeman30 November 2008 at 07:12

    Hi Search User,

    Thanks for the feedback.

    Why do you prefer science.gov over scitopia, specifically?"

    I don't prefer science.gov over scitopia - I just listed them in the same order as the original posting. Personally, I find science.gov too limited in coverage for the subjects I research. I singled out Scirus, TechXtra and Worldwidescience because they usually provide the best results for the type of information and subject matter that I need at the moment. In another 6 months I might be looking at different topics and industries that will require different databases. "Horses for courses" as the saying goes :-)

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  9. TechXtra mentioned in Zen Monthly Newsletter. « TechXtra News Blog3 February 2009 at 11:06

    [...] TechXtra mentioned in Zen Monthly Newsletter. Posted in News by Roddy MacLeod on the February 3, 2009 Nice to see that TechXtra was mentioned in this month’s Zen Monthly Newsletter (under The results Google can’t find).  TechXtra is also mentioned in Karen Blakeman’s Blog. [...]

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