ANALYSIS OF SEARCH SYSTEMS FOR ELECTRONIC JOURNALS¹

The search engines of electronic scientific journals consist of software applications with fields that the user can fill in order to request the retrieval of some subject. The present research analyzes the search in three internationally renowned journals Nature, Science and PLOS Biology. In order to do so, we present a brief bibliographic review of the search system and its components. The results of the analysis are shown below. The method chosen was the inspection by checklist, carried out using test sentences described for this research based on reference authors in the area such as Rosenfeld, Morville and Arango (2015), Kalbach (2009) and Garrett (2011). Systematic and in-depth verification enabled us to list the resources applied to the search of high visibility scientific journals. On the other hand, it was possible to identify points where some modifications would bring benefits to the users' experience of the journals. In addition, through the comparison between the three journals, the best solutions used in each of the search engines were evidenced. Considering the importance of journals for scientific communication, it is understood as relevant studies aimed at the constant updating of their systems. The analysis of the search contributes to the improvement of these information vehicles and, consequently, promotes the visibility of the published texts.

KEYWORDS:
Search system; Electronic scientific journal; Scientific communication; Open access