Today, I tried Google trend for some interesting comparisons. In Google trend, you can search just one item or topic or compare several.
Pubmed vs Google Scholar
I personally used both of them, Pubmed by default show the newest paper first and it’s helpful to keep on track. While Google Scholar shows the most relevant paper, moreover it shows the citation for those papers. By citation numbers, you will have a general idea how widely recoganized this paper is.
My question is: which reference database used more often? My guess is Google Scholar because its wide topics, Pubmed is maily for biological science. For all graphs below, red is Google Scholar and blue is Pubmed.
Worldwide 5 years
USA 5 years
Worldwide 2004 to now
USA last year
Conclusion
Very interesting, couple of things I noticed:
- Overall, Google scholar has higher trend score than Pubmed.
- Worldwide and USA 5 years share very similar vibration pattern.
- 2004-2008 Pubmed had more searches, but since the beginning of 2008, Google Scholar passed Pubmed. I guess Scholar gradually attract some users from Pubmed.
- Within a year, Spring and Fall semester are two high usage time for Scholar. In spring semester, the low time is March 12-18 which is Spring Break for a lot of universities. In fall semester, two peaks coming right before Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday. The lowest time of year is Christmas holiday Dec 25 to Dec 31.
Four Leagues (NBA vs NFL vs NHL vs MLB)
USA 2004 - Present
NBA and NFL are growing.
USA Past 12 month
Peak for NBA is at Christmas Games, such a high peak, incredible.
Summary
Clearly, we have so many things can look at Google Trend. I suggest you can just go to their website and try bunch of things that interests to you. I may try Baidu Trend (百度指数) next time.