Undergraduate college students turn to Google.com and Google Scholar a majority of the time for researching primary literature, which is most likely due to lack of research literacy and inefficient use of databases. However, many faculty, especially in the sciences, want students to use sources found from databases offered by the universities. Thus, this project sought to compare the results from general academic databases and science-specific databases on topics that a student might be expected to research in the chemistry field. Some topics had specific results expected, such as finding the NMR spectrum for benzyl bromide, while others were more general, such as finding how to calibrate pipettes. The science-specific databases were expected to provide more useful sources for topics that are specific to science. The general databases were expected to provide more useful sources for topics that are of general interest that involve science. Seven databases were analyzed in this study, three general (Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, and Wiley Online Library) and four science-specific (ACS Publications, ScienceDirect, SciFinder Scholar, and Scopus). The top ten search hits provided by each database were analyzed with rubrics designed specifically for each search topic and given points based on the rubric scoring systems. Among the interesting results found during this study is that the quantity of search hits does not usually agree with the quality and usefulness of sources. Application of these results could be used in the future to improve chemistry literature training for undergraduate students.

Comparing the productivity of science-specific and general databases for chemistry primary literature searches

255th National Meeting (2018)

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