The impact of on-line search availability on literature retrieval patterns of researchers.
The ready availability of on-line information resources may have resulted in a change in biomedical researchers' patterns of use of resources which are not available on-line. To investigate the occurrence and extent of these changes, the distribution patterns by date of citations from every major article published in ten high-impact biomedical journals in 1959, 1969, and 1979 were analyzed. The analysis showed that in all three time periods approximately 89% of the references fell within fifteen years of the journal's publication date. In 1979, however, references were more evenly distributed over the fifteen years available on-line. In addition, a marked increase was noted in the number of cited references per article. To verify the citation analysis results, a random selection of senior authors of 1979 papers was surveyed. Major findings showed that: (1) approximately 29% of the respondents had used a computer bibliography to prepare the paper which was analyzed; (2) approximately 73% of those using a computer search used it in combination with a manual search; and (3) less than 22% of all respondents had never used a computer-generated bibliography.
D001634:Bibliographies as Topic; D007255:Information Services; D007256:Information Systems; D008523:MEDLARS; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D014481:United States