Web-Based Clinical Research Information: Endocrine Diseases

Web based information tools including Search Engines; Meta Search Engines are used to find the needed information in the World Wide Web. The aim of this study was to web-based clinical research information in endocrine diseases and compared search engines, Meta search engines and medical search endings in endocrine diseases. In this descriptive research, 5 search engine, 5 meta-search engines and 5 medical search engines are selected by the website of www.searchenginewatch.com as well-used internet search tools, were chosen. Endocrine diseases keywords were chosen from medical subject Headings (Mesh) and then selected terms of endocrinology were searched in each of search engines. The first 10 results of search engines were selected for evaluation of recall and precision. Data were analyzed with Excel. According to the result of this study, "Google" showed the higher most retrieved results (43% precision, 32% recalls. Among the Medical search engines "Progofrog" got the first rank (70/9%), Google scholar (59/09%), Pub med (57/27%) precision and pub med, Google scholar, sires, midi search (8/9%) recall. In Meta search engine Mamma got the highest rank (28%) precision and (27%) recall. General and medical search and meta-search engines are appropriate tools for researcher or students or professional users and they have appropriate search capabilities and facilities. Although using search engines in retrieving relevant documents is useful for endocrinology experts, but it is suggested that users follow the search in several search engines to access the relevant documents among the vastly available sources on web.