Like clockwork, I say.
Chris Green
============
Mike Palij wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:50:28 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrpte:
>
>> I just did my own little test. I searched both Google Scholar and
>> PsycInfo for the phrase "implicit learning" (your results may vary).
>> There was absolutely nothing dodgey about the results Google Scholar
>> gave me (I checked the first 50 of several hundred thousand).
>>
>
> Now this is odd. First, it matters whether one uses "implicit learning"
> (i.e., with quotes) or implicit learning.
> For "implicit learning" (with quotes), google scholar returns:
> |Results 1 - 100 of about 16,100. (0.11 sec)
>
> Removing the quotes makes a difference.
>
> NOTES:
> (1) Although 16,100 hits are indicated, with 100 references per
> page, the list of references ends at page 10 with the last citation being:
>
> [CITATION] Implizites Lernen: Probleme und Perspektiven [Implicit learning:
> Problems and perspectives]
> A Buchner - Weinheim, Germany: Beltz Psychologie Verlags Union, 1993
>
> When [CITATION} is listed, I believe that the hit is for a document
> that has the cites that article in its reference list, that is, it is a
> duplicate
> count of the document.
>
> (2) Google Scholar does not handle duplicate refernces well. Searching
> for publications with Palij in Google Scholar produces these duplicates;
>
> Principles of spatial problem solving.
> M Levine, IN Jankovic, M Palij - Journal of Experimental …, 1982 -
> psycnet.apa.org
> SUMMARY Blindfolded college students learned simple paths either by moving
> their
> fingers over the successive points of a map of the path, walking through the
> path laid
> out on the floor, or (with the blindfold temporarily removed) viewing a map
> of the path.
> They were ...
>
> [CITATION] IN and Palij, M.(1982). Principles of spatial problem solving
> MJ Levine, IN Jankovic - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
>
> [CITATION] Principles of spatial problem &Avin%
> M Levine, I Jankovic, M Palij - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,
> 1982
>
> [CITATION] Principles of spatial problem solving
> M Levin, I Jankovic, M Palij - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,
> 1982
>
> This represent 3 duplicates of the first article, all within the first page of
> 100 hits. I did not check to see if there were additional duplicates on
> subsequent pages.
>
> (3) Using the CSA Illumina interface to PsycInfo (NOTE: PsycInfo
> has different interfaces, the CSA interface is available at NYU
> while, say, the EBSCOhost interface is used at CUNY -- they
> do not return the same results on the basis of my prior experience),
> searching for "implicit learning" (with quotes) returns:
>
> |1054 results found for: KW=("implicit learning") in PsycINFO
>
> And in the broader area of "Social Sciences:
>
> |1896 results found for: KW=("implicit learning") in Social Sciences Subject
> Area
>
> It has been my experience that PsycInfo rarely produces duplicate
> references (not counting articles that are republished in books of
> reading). In searching the Social Sciences Subject Area, I found
> duplicates. So, one needs to know how one's database handles
> duplicate entries.
>
>
>> [snip]
>> PsycInfo returned far fewer (just several thousand) items, but the top
>> 50 were mostly from highly quality journals. The one really noticeable
>> difference, however, was that it returned far, far more irrelevant items
>> than Google Scholar did. I'm not sure how some of these got caught by
>> the search engine. At first I thought I had simply made the mistake of
>> not putting "implicit learning" in quotations marks, but when I went
>> back and did that, I still got a raft of irrelevant citations.
>>
>
> I'm note sure what criteria Chris is using to define "irrelevant items"
> and I'm sure reasonable people might disagree as what is and is not
> relevant.
>
>
>> I also took ISI's "Web of Knowledge" for a spin on the same search. I
>> got less than a thousand (885) returns, Again, I seemed to get a lot
>> that was irrelevant to the topic I was interested in. The journals
>> looked solid, though it seemed that there were more applied journals
>> than with the other two engines.
>>
>
> According to info on the NYU library website, "Web of Knowledge"
> is described as the following:
>
> Web of Knowledge
> Allows you to cross-search ISI databases: Web of Science, Biological
> Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews, Food Science and Technology Abstracts,
> INSPEC, Medline, and Journal Citation Reports.
>
> My first reaction is my would Chirs search Web of Knowledge when
> the Web of Science would have been more appropriate:
>
> Web of Science (ISI)
> Web of Science provides seamless access to the Science Citation Expanded®,
> Social Sciences Citation Index®, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index™.
>
> A search of Web of Science for "implicit learning" (without quotes) produces:
>
> Results
> Topic=(implicit learning)
> Timespan=All Years. Databases=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI.
> Results: 2,929
>
> With quote marks:
> Results: 846
>
> It is unclear why such differences would occur.
>
>
>> My conclusion: if I had to go for one, it would be Google Scholar. If I
>> were not constrained to one, I'd check PsycInfo too. WoK is best if what
>> you want is a list of article that have cited a particular article of
>> the past.
>>
>
> Some final points:
>
> (1) Google Scholar does not seem to handle duplicate cases well. If an
> articles cited within an article, it appear to turn up as hits on GS. One
> would then have to ignore the hits which begin with [CITATION] -- there
> does not appear to be anyway to exclude these from the list (if someone
> knows how to exclude them, please let us know).
>
> (2) Citation analysis is a tricky business but Web of Science seems to be
> the best at it. Consider the following number of citations for the
> Levein, Janovic, and Palij (1984) JEPG
>
> Google Scholar: Cited by 197 - Related articles - All 5 versions
> (why GS thinks there are 5 versions of this article is puzzling)
>
> Web of Science: 162 citations
>
> PscyInfo (CSA Illumina): 71 citations
>
> Now, as much as I would like to go with the Google Scholar citations,
> I'm pretty sure that some of them are duplicates while I'm equally confident
> thet Web of Science citation do not contain duplicates.
>
> I have NO idea what how PsycInfo tracks citations but clearly it
> doesn't do such a good job.
>
> -Mike Palij
> New York University
> [email protected]
>
>
>
>
> ---
> You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected].
> To unsubscribe click here:
> http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13132.a868d710aa4ef67a68807ce4fe8bd0da&n=T&l=tips&o=2875
> or send a blank email to
> leave-2875-13132.a868d710aa4ef67a68807ce4fe8bd...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
>
>
---
You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected].
To unsubscribe click here:
http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=2876
or send a blank email to
leave-2876-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
