Q: Directly searching for journal articles?

mhandelman · Post by **mhandelman** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:30 am

This is my first time using a bibliography program, and I find the capacity to search the Internet directly for books, and the computer automatically constructing the bibliography extremely helpful (rather than me constructing the bibligraphic reference manually).

I was wondering if there is any way of doing the similar thing for journal articles? If there isn't perhaps, perhaps Bookends should directly search 'Google Scholar' as well?

Post by **Jon** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 11:04 am

I assume you're not in the biomedical sciences, where PubMed is the major site for article searching. I'm interested in what other people think as well. Would searching via Google Scholar be useful ("noes" are as useful as "yesses").

Jon
Sonny Software

nicka · Post by **nicka** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 2:32 pm

Yes, no question. Since I end up searching on Google Scholar via Firefox for about 70% of papers, this would save me a couple of steps per search.

bluloo · Post by **bluloo** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:02 pm

The ability to search other potentially free resources is always good.

I vote yes to google scholar.

Post by **Jon** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:12 pm

Indiscriminate requests only slow down development of other features. That's why most polls on forums are useless -- no one wants to vote against someone else's desire. But of course the time and energy devoted to implementing that feature can't be spent on something that may be more useful or important. So please only sign on to something if you really value it, and be ready to say "it's not important to me".

In any case, I'll keep an eye on this.

Jon
Sonny Software

bluloo · Post by **bluloo** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:58 pm

Jon,

Based on your history with user requests and perhaps private emails as well, use your own judgement for feature priorities.

For me, this would be a nice to have but certainly not a necessity.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll keep that in mind when commenting on feature requests in the future.

Post by **Jon** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:07 pm

As you might guess, there is a long (never ending) list of features requested as well as unrequested (but that I want to see implemented). The next update won't have Google Scholar searches, but it will be a substantial release that should have something for almost everyone.

Jon
Sonny Software

Riad Goas · Post by **Riad Goas** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 10:39 pm

My vote is Yes. . . It would be very helpful to have Google Scholar searches in the future. . .

Thanks for this excellent app.

danzac · Post by **danzac** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 12:08 am

Google scholar is definitely the way to go. Another option, which is very close along the lines of google scholar, is the CrossRef search. But that is a pilot project and I'm not sure if it is here to stay.

A big bonus of google scholar is that it has access to JSTOR metadata and only requires a sign-in to get the full text. I tried to make a google custom search to do the same thing with JSTOR and it is blocked. JSTOR has a huge collection and google scholar is the best way to search it.

talazem · Post by **talazem** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 3:56 pm

Due to the JSTOR search in Google Scholar: yes.

jadrain · Post by **jadrain** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 12:27 pm

For my part, in the natural sciences (paleontology), PubMed is pretty much irrelevant but I use Google Scholar almost daily. That said, I'm happy enough just firing up my browser and this addition for me would be more in the "would be nice" as opposed to "must have" category.

Post by **Jon** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:32 pm

I've looked into Google Scholar a bit, and can't find an API for web services. I wouldn't hack their http service, mainly because they could break it at any time without warning (they've already done that once). If there is an API I've missed, please point me to it.

Jon
Sonny Software

danzac · Post by **danzac** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:13 am

Jon wrote:I've looked into Google Scholar a bit, and can't find an API for web services. I wouldn't hack their http service, mainly because they could break it at any time without warning (they've already done that once). If there is an API I've missed, please point me to it.

crappy. Maybe if it ever gets out of beta this will change.

danzac · Post by **danzac** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:24 am

Jon,
I don't know much about this stuff but are there particular types of databases that you would be able to do this for?

I'm thinking of three or four databases online that are particular to religious studies.

Index Theologicus is an allegro database http://www.ixtheo.de/

Rambi is a Jewish database (an ALEPH network-whatever that means) http://jnul.huji.ac.il/rambi/

BILDI is probably the largest free journal database. The only drawback is its search strings. http://www.uibk.ac.at/bibfu/bildi/index-en.html

BiBIL is not as large as BILDI but much more user friendly and unicode throughout. Again its free, https://wwwdbunil.unil.ch/bibil//bi/en/bibilhome.html

perhaps these can be made use of.

Danny

Post by **Jon** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:39 am

The databases that Bookends searches directly provide for direct third party access (PubMed, Amazon, and Z39.50-compliant servers). The databases you list were designed for browser access only. Use your browser to search them.

Jon
Sonny Software