Abstract
We researchers have taken searching for information for granted for far too long. The COVID‐19 pandemic shows us the boundaries of academic searching capabilities, both in terms of our know‐how and of the systems we have. With hundreds of studies published daily on COVID‐19, for example, we struggle to find, stay up‐to‐date, and synthesize information—all hampering evidence‐informed decision making. This COVID‐19 information crisis is indicative of the broader problem of information overloaded academic research. To improve our finding capabilities, we urgently need to improve how we search and the systems we use.We respond to Klopfenstein and Dampier (Res Syn Meth. 2020) who commented on our 2020 paper and proposed a way of improving PubMed's and Google Scholar's search functionalities. Our response puts their commentary in a larger frame and suggests how we can improve academic searching altogether. We urge that researchers need to understand that search skills require dedicated education and training. Better and more efficient searching requires an initial understanding of the different goals that define the way searching needs to be conducted. We explain the main types of searching that we academics routinely engage in; distinguishing lookup, exploratory, and systematic searching. These three types must be conducted using different search methods (heuristics) and using search systems with specific capabilities. To improve academic searching, we introduce the “Search Triangle” model emphasizing the importance of matching goals, heuristics, and systems. Further, we suggest an urgently needed agenda toward search literacy as the norm in academic research and fit‐for‐purpose search systems.
Highlights
We thank Klopfenstein and Dampier[1] for their comment on our paper and for acknowledging the need to improve both PubMed and Google Scholar with functionalities that each is currently missing
We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic is an important time to consider how to improve academic searching altogether
There are presently significant misunderstandings within the research community regarding what systematic searches should and should not entail. These misunderstandings have led to criticism of the systematic review method which we find are unfounded—at least in view of the literature search phase that identifies the corpus of evidence for subsequent synthesis
Summary
We claim that research discovery needs an urgent overhaul. Only with awareness of the basic concepts of academic searching, we can know how to make our search routines and systems fit-for-purpose. Users want efficient and convenient information retrieval, in lookup searches15,16—the first result that fits typically satisfies the information need.[17] as researchers or decision-makers we should explore the available evidence in the least biased way or, better still, to search systematically to have all available evidence for a specific topic (including the counter-evidence to one cherry-picked paper). Users will often stop searching when they believe they have reached their goal (the information need is met) or when they conclude it cannot be reached with the resources available.[17] While both lookup and exploratory searches are established concepts in information retrieval, they do not cover systematic searches—which we claimed in our paper[2] is a distinct third search type with unique heuristics and requirements. Users impatiently aim to fill their information gaps with quick, targeted searches
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