A Comparison of Article Search APIs via Blinded Experiment and Developer Review

Abstract

This study looks at perceived user preference between products that can provide a scholarly article search service via an application programming interface (API). The study set up a blinded review and asked users at Johns Hopkins to select the service that provided the most useful results. Few statistically significant preferences were detected, and some interpretation is provided of what the results might tell us. The specific products evaluated for this study are: Serials Solutions Summon, Ex Libris Primo, EBSCO EDS, EBSCOHost ‘traditional’ API, and Elsevier Scopus. Re-usable open source tools for implementing article search were created to support the study and future development, and a developer review of the APIs is included based on the developer's experience in this implementation.