Searching for the Right Search — Reaching the Medical Literature

TLDR

Web-based search engines are transforming how we access medical literature, enabling direct links to articles via Google and other engines, supplementing traditional print and online browsing. By quickly searching by title, author, or topic, users can link to bibliographic citations, abstracts, or full articles. No additional metadata provided.

Abstract

Web-based search engines are transforming our use of the medical literature. Although we continue to read the print issues of journals and to browse current issues online, we are now using links from Google — the flagship search engine of the Mountain View, California, company of the same name — and other search engines, as well as citation links in other articles, to gain direct access to the articles we want. For example, by quickly searching by the title of an article, an author, or a specific topic, we can often link to a bibliographic citation, the abstract, or the . . .