Linda's first trip to Lake City, Colorado
I don’t know who it was that turned me on to Google Scholar,
but whoever it was has ruined my life.
Google Scholar is more addictive than crack cocaine, if perhaps not quite
so harmful. I have spent most of an
afternoon playing with this digital toy, and now it is dinner time, the house
is still a mess (and the cleaning lady comes tomorrow), and I haven’t defrosted
anything. Woe is me!
I started out investigating a crackpot notion that I could
help Dr. Rivkin as he draws abreast of cancer research. So, first I searched on “ovarian cancer”,
anywhere in the article, years 2008 to 2013.
I got 160,000 hits, approximately!
(Ridiculous! All the cancer
researchers in all the world couldn’t read that many articles, not in five
years, anyway.) Then I asked for articles
having “ovarian cancer” in their titles.
Same period. I got 13,400
hits! I gave up and made a list of the most-cited
articles, on the forlorn hope that these were the best. I know they aren’t: hell, my papers were
never the most cited, but they were always the best. But what more can one do?
For comparison, I did a similar search, for articles with
the word “paleomagnetism” in their titles.
Same period. I got 342 hits. I guess that comparison accurately reflects
the importance of the two scholarly endeavors .
But what the heck; geologists have more fun.
Only five of you have read this entertaining little ditty, as of 9/27/13. Maybe if I put it on Facebook it would get the attention I think it deserves.
ReplyDeleteIt worked for me. I never heard of google scholar.
ReplyDeleteGo to Google. Type in "Google Scholar", and enter. When Google Scholar comes up, click on "Advanced Search". On the line marked "all these words" type "Corvus brachyrunchos", which - as a crow fancier - you will know is the common American crow. At the bottom, type in 2010 to 2013. Hit the button. In 2 seconds or less Google Scholar will give you a list of about 1000 scholarly articles published between 2010 and 2013. One is why crows migrate during the daytime. Another is how crows learn to recognize bad people. Lots of fun.
Delete