Crossing the Academic Ocean? Judit Bar-Ilan's Oeuvre on Search Engines studies

TL;DR

This paper analyzes Judit Bar-Ilan's extensive research on search engines through a systematic review and interdisciplinarity analysis, highlighting the evolution of research focus and its interdisciplinary impact.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of Judit Bar-Ilan's work, revealing the diversity of studied topics and the interdisciplinary influence across computer science and information sciences.

Findings

Studied 43 different search engine topics.

Shift from descriptive to empirical user studies over time.

Significant interdisciplinary impact on library and information sciences.

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to analyse the contributions of Judit Bar-Ilan to the search engines studies. To do this, two complementary approaches have been carried out. First, a systematic literature review of 47 publications authored and co-authored by Judit and devoted to this topic. Second, an interdisciplinarity analysis based on the cited references (publications cited by Judit) and citing documents (publications that cite Judit's work) through Scopus. The systematic literature review unravels an immense amount of search engines studied (43) and indicators measured (especially technical precision, overlap and fluctuation over time). In addition to this, an evolution over the years is detected from descriptive statistical studies towards empirical user studies, with a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods. Otherwise, the interdisciplinary analysis evidences that a significant portion of Judit's oeuvre was intellectually founded on the computer sciences, achieving a significant, but not exclusively, impact on library and information sciences.