We performed searches in the following alternatives to see how it compared to PubMed. Here are the results of that effort.
eTBLAST
- Took a very long time to come up with results
- Many articles are missing abstracts
- Often points to PubMed
- Not recommended
GoPubMed
- Has a search box that attempts to auto complete
- Responses have a good deal of explanation
- Links seem all over the place and its hard to tell what to click on
- Promising, but needs more work: Not recommended
HighWirePress
- Interface is a bit clunky
- Uses Google searching logic in terms of the ability to restrict results based upon keyword combinations (a good thing), however, does not allow negative words, and the search is very limited compared to Google
- Flexible searching, but we would prefer if they simply followed the Google standard. The Google search standard is published here (http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=searchguides.html&ctx=basics&hl=en), and the advanced here (http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=searchguides.html&ctx=advanced)
- Article links (both paid and free) are extremely obvious, as is the abstract and full text
- Recommended
We were able to get to this actual research documents within seconds of reviewing the search results.
HubMed
- Clean usable interface
- Nice summary of results
- Abstract link, but no article link
- Sends you to PubMed for more detail
- Recommended. Its better than PubMed by overrelies upon PubMed. Therefore, it is not a single stop site like HighWire Press
Where is the article link? Its not apparent to us.
Conclusion
We tested all these engines with the same search terms (chemotherapy, breast, hormone) and came up with the same number of articles in each, reflecting the fact that all these front ends are indeed pulling off of the same MedLine database. PubMed may be the most popular, but it is nowhere close to the best front end to use for MedLine. That distinction belongs to High Wire Press.
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