Corrao Salvatore, Leone Francesco, Arnone Sabrina
Unità Operativa di Metodologia Clinica ad indirizzo epidemiologico-statistico, Azienda di Rilievo Nazionale ad Alta Specializzazione Ospedali Civico e Benfratelli, G. Di Cristina, M. Ascoli, Palermo.
Recenti Prog Med. 2004 Jan;95(1):22-6.
The internet is a communication medium and content distributor that provide information in the general sense but it could be of great utility regarding as the search and retrieval of biomedical information. Search engines represent a great deal to rapidly find information on the net. However, we do not know whether general search engines and meta-search ones are reliable in order to find useful and validated biomedical information. The aim of our study was to verify the reproducibility of a search by key-words (pediatric or evidence) using 9 international search engines and 1 meta-search engine at the baseline and after a one year period. We analysed the first 20 citations as output of each searching. We evaluated the formal quality of Web-sites and their domain extensions. Moreover, we compared the output of each search at the start of this study and after a one year period and we considered as a criterion of reliability the number of Web-sites cited again. We found some interesting results that are reported throughout the text. Our findings point out an extreme dynamicity of the information on the Web and, for this reason, we advice a great caution when someone want to use search and meta-search engines as a tool for searching and retrieve reliable biomedical information. On the other hand, some search and meta-search engines could be very useful as a first step searching for defining better a search and, moreover, for finding institutional Web-sites too. This paper allows to know a more conscious approach to the internet biomedical information universe.
互联网是一种通信媒介和内容分发渠道，它能提供一般意义上的信息，但在生物医学信息的搜索和检索方面可能具有很大的实用性。搜索引擎对于在网上快速查找信息非常重要。然而，我们不知道通用搜索引擎和元搜索引擎在查找有用且经过验证的生物医学信息时是否可靠。我们研究的目的是使用9个国际搜索引擎和1个元搜索引擎，在基线期和一年后，验证通过关键词（儿科或证据）进行搜索的可重复性。我们分析了每次搜索输出的前20条引用。我们评估了网站的形式质量及其域名扩展名。此外，我们比较了本研究开始时和一年后的每次搜索输出，并将再次被引用的网站数量作为可靠性标准。我们发现了一些有趣的结果，并在全文中进行了报道。我们的研究结果指出了网络信息的极端动态性，因此，当有人想使用搜索引擎和元搜索引擎作为搜索和检索可靠生物医学信息的工具时，我们建议要格外谨慎。另一方面，一些搜索引擎和元搜索引擎作为初步搜索工具，对于更好地定义搜索以及查找机构网站可能非常有用。本文有助于人们更有意识地了解互联网生物医学信息领域。
