Academic Search in Response to Major Scientific Events

In this paper, we look at the search behavior of users of an academic search engine and in particular, their query patterns following the occurrence of major scientific events. We select Nobel Prize announcements as major scientific events and observe how academic searchers behave in response to their occurrences. We have found unique trends for the academic searchers, which are different from users of a web search engine. Moreover, academic searchers have similar query trends even for different topics, showing a commonality in their query behavior. The insights gained in this paper highlight the unique behavior of academic searchers and the differences from users of general web search engines. The findings may have implications for our understanding of the search behavior of academic searchers as well as for search engine design, for instance, concerning approaches to address information needs around major scientific events.