The Usefulness of Related Functions in Web of Science and Scopus

Abstract

the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 2.5 Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncsa/2.5/ca/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one. AbstractObjective -This study evaluates the effectiveness of the related search functions in Web of Science and Scopus. Web of Science has one related search function (searching by references) whereas Scopus has three related search functions (searching by references, authors, or keywords).Methods -Thirty queries were searched in both Web of Science and Scopus. For each query, the most relevant document was retrieved and its first thirty related documents were assessed for relevancy to the original query. Results for both databases were compared using the median values of precision. For Scopus the three different methods of relevance were compared using median precision values.Results -The median precision value for the related documents retrieved from Web of Science was 0.63, while the median for those retrieved from Scopus using the related by references function was 0.62. A Wilcoxon test showed no significant difference in the two medians. In the comparison of the three related functions in Scopus, the median precision values were 0.62, 0.42, and 0.43 for the related search functions by references, authors, and keywords respectively. A Friedman's test showed that the median precision value for relatedness by references was significantly higher than the median vales for the other two related functions. In Scopus, the Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2011, 6.1 42 effectiveness of the related search function using all keywords was not as effective when compared to the effectiveness using select keywords. The median precision value with select keywords was 0.17.

Supplementary strategies identified additional eligible studies in qualitative systematic reviews

“…A search filter needs to balance the ratio of sensitivity (retrieval of all relevant articles) and precision (retrieval of relevant articles as a proportion of total number of records found), but unfortunately it is not possible to suggest a single search filter to identify qualitative research [4e6]. Furthermore, many researchers rely on identifying relevant studies using database features that identify similar or related publications which typically relies on either word similarity using weights of terms appearing in title, abstract and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) [7] or shared references in the reference lists [8]. Generally, many approaches are suggested in the literature to strengthen the retrieval of qualitative studies, however there are few standard requirements and robust, general approaches may be laborious [9].…”