The Accuracy and Thoroughness of a Federated Search Engine in the Health Sciences

摘要

Research studies show that researchers need to access multiple resources to ensure a comprehensive search. In the health care field, health professionals' time is very limited, and they would benefit from being able to access multiple resources simultaneously. Health professionals must retrieve the most relevant and accurate information possible when applying clinical information to patient care. While a federated search engine may offer speedy search capabilities, do they offer the same accuracy and relevancy as directly searching the core health sciences databases? The purpose of this study is to describe, evaluate, and compare searching health sciences topics using a federated search engine versus searching five core health sciences databases directly. The following databases were selected for this study: WebFeat (federated search engine), MEDLINE, CINAHL, Science Citation Index, Biological Abstracts, and EMBASE. While WebFeat is convenient for searching multiple databases simultaneously, it does not offer the advanced search limits offered by directly searching some of the health sciences databases. The lack of limits available in the federated search engine means increased results that may not be relevant to the busy health care professional.