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Table 5 Comparison of Google Scholar and PubMed in systematic review searching

From: The comparative recall of Google Scholar versus PubMed in identical searches for biomedical systematic reviews: a review of searches used in systematic reviews

Google Scholar

PubMed

Shows up to 1,000 results

Shows all results

Searches the full text of the article, and words on the webpage

Searches only bibliographic data and controlled vocabulary (MeSH terms)

No controlled vocabulary available

Controlled vocabulary (MeSH terms) added by skilled indexers and searchable (including 'explode’)

Searches the broad aspect of science (filters limiting results to medical articles were removed)

Only contains articles on medical topics

No search history available (unable to compare or combine record sets)

Detailed search history available, flexibility in combining record sets to create complicated search strategies

Search queries limited to 256 characters

No limits on the length of search queries

No truncation allowed. Tilde can be used to search for variants, but cannot be used in OR relationship with other words. GS is said to search for word variants, but this is very rare and the mechanism is unclear.

Truncation allowed

Possibly automatic searching for synonyms (details unclear)

Automatic Term Mapping (details available)

Field names only for title (complete query) and author names

Field names for many fields can be assigned per synonym

No advanced limits (for publication type, human studies and so on)

Multiple advanced limits in the database itself, or available from third parties

Cannot accurately limit to search dates (no controlled updates)

Different date fields available to limit searches to results before a certain date

Cannot download results in bulk to reference management software

Multiple options to download the complete results set to reference management software

Proximity searching only with exact order and exact number of connecting words

No proximity search possible