For lawyers, physicians and scientists hunting for medical and scientific literature, the National Library of Medicine’s Pubmed database was the only game in town for years. But when the online search gurus at Google launched Google Scholar in beta in 2004, many professionals switched platforms.
For lawyers, physicians and scientists hunting for medical and scientific literature, the National Library of Medicine’s Pubmed database was the only game in town for years. But when the online search gurus at Google launched Google Scholar in beta in 2004, many professionals switched platforms.
Since the emergence of Google Scholar nearly a decade ago, users have debated the platform’s pros and cons, and studies have assessed its viability. While Google Scholar has improved since early studies pointed out its deficiencies, recent studies still favor Pubmed.
A recent article by Bramer and colleagues evaluates the body of research and concludes that Pubmed remains the preferred platform overall. While their research focused on the use of these databases for performing systematic reviews, the points that they make are relevant to lawyers conducting scientific research for cases involving complex scientific issues (e.g., toxic tort or pharmaceutical and medical device cases).
Bramer asserts that Pubmed surpasses Google Scholar for the following reasons:
Although Pubmed provides a more robust and focused search experience than Google Scholar, Pubmed searches only bibliographic data while Google Scholar searches the full text.
However, other studies (such as this one, published by one of Bramer’s colleagues) support the view that Google Scholar is not sufficient for performing reliable systematic reviews.
The insight these studies offer is valuable to attorneys for two reasons: (1) Wading through the vast amount of information available can be a time-consuming task, and a dynamic search tool can improve efficiency; (2) When confronted with an expert who performs systematic reviews, exposing the limitations of the expert’s research database may prove an effective strategy.
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