Google Scholar VS Medline

Many of you have used Google Scholar to find journal articles. But is Google Scholar the way to go if you are looking for clinical information? Should you be using Medline instead? Here are a few things to think about when you need information on a clinical topic:

• Medline has 16 million citations from 5,000 journals. Google Scholar “harvests” information from other websites. The number of records and journals covered is unknown.
• The National Library of Medicine indexes and maintains these records with strict quality control methods. Google Scholar has no quality control methods. There is no standardized terms for searching concepts.
• The records in Medline are permanent. If you found an article last month, you will find it again this month. In Google Scholar, records can appear or disappear as publishers change their policies. You have no idea what you are missing.
• Medline is updated on a daily basis. Google Scholar is updated on a monthly basis.
• If you search Medline through the Health Sciences Library (OVID, PubMed), you will be able to identify and/or link to all the full-text journals the Library subscribes to (approximated 1,400 titles). With Google scholar, you only get the full text if it is free on the Web.

Searching Google Scholar is fine for quick and dirty searches but results can be inconsistent and you might miss important papers. Next time you are looking for clinical information, try Medline instead of Google Scholar.

Check out a recent article about this issue:

Falagas, M. Comparison of Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar: Strengths and Weaknesses. FASEB Journal. 2008 Feb;22(2):338-42.

If you need help searching Medline, contact a reference librarian at 6-9192 or e-mail us at researchservices@lumc.edu