Monday, May 11, 2009

Search tip: Happy Birthday! (How old is this article?)

Google® and Yahoo!® searches result in lots of hits that may be interesting, but you would like to know how old they are. Authors sometimes forget to include the date of publication in the article. Here are a couple of tips to pinpoint an article’s birthday.

When the article is presented in Adobe PDF format, you can try selecting File/Properties. Often, the date that the file was created is displayed, which, while not definitive, is a good indicator of the age of the articles.

Failing that, many articles will list references. Scrutinize the references for the dates of the various articles being referenced. The reference with the most recent date, plus a year or two, is a fairly reliable indicator of the age of the article you are interested in.

For example, I used the Adobe properties technique to determine that the following article was probably published or produced in 2006.

Diesel Desulfurization For High Temperature Fuel Cells
Sai P. Katikaneni1,2*, and J. Hunt1
1FuelCell Energy, 3 Great Pasture Road, Danbury, CT, 0681, USA
2Present Address: Saudi Aramco, PO Box 12814, Dhahran, 31311 Saudi Arabia
*sai.katikaneni@aramco.com

source: www.nacatsoc.org/20nam/abstracts/P-S12-07A.pdf

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