fatvegan

Since starting university in 2003, I've used a sordid multitude of databases that have attempted to bring together articles from different journals into a useful resource. The vast majority do a terrible job. Even when you are able to find what you're looking for the process is generally painful. UNSW even tried to combine all the databases into one large database, but I've had even worse experience than that.

What I don't understand, is for something so simple, how can so many clever (presumably) people get it wrong? Data storage and search is not that hard. Vast amounts of money must be pouring into these companies. They're all busy competing and reinventing each other's failed ideas.

I've started using Google Scholar. Despite the fact that it doesn't even have most of the articles I want in it, it's far more useable than anything else I've seen. It's so simple. It looks like it's hardly even trying. You search and it tells you if it has it, if it's seen it somewhere or if it's cited by other articles. Even random searches show up a whole lot of freely available research. It's really quite lovely.