IF
I researcher Michael Gusenbauer investigates the scope and quality of academic search engines and bibliographic databases. His newest findings were recently published in Scientometrics (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2958-5) and now featured in Science (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.363.6427.564). Through his research he was able to put a number on the sizes of the most popular academic search engines and bibliographic databases. This is especially relevant for Google Scholar, a search engine that likes to keep an aura of secrecy around the workings of its service. Despite being the most popular source for scientific information retrieval, it has never released size numbers since its launch in 2004. Michael found out that Google Scholar’s size, with now more than 389 million records, has most likely been underestimated by more than 50% compared to earlier studies. Moreover, his research introduced an improved method for size estimation of academic search engines and bibliographic databases.
