Introduction:

The validity of the methods used to locate theses published in scientific journals is uncertain.

Objective:

To compare the effectiveness and efficiency of different methods (including our proposal) to locate theses published in indexed scientific journals.

Material and Methods:

A descriptive observational study was made. Five methods ("A", "B", "C", "D", "E") used to locate published theses were identified and our proposal was developed (method "F"). The six methods and their strategies were tested using five theses that have already been published. Effectiveness was evaluated through the analysis of the relationship between (published theses / total of theses), efficiency (published theses / [number of tests] x [total of theses]) and relative position of the search (order in which the thesis was located / total results from the search).

Results:

The most effective and efficient methods were: "F" (1 and 0.5) and "D" (1 and 0.5), followed by the "B" method (0.8 and 0.2). The methods with the lowest effectiveness and efficiency were: methods "A" (0.6 and 0.15), "C" (0.6 and 0.12) and "E" (0.2 and 0.01). In addition, the relative position for each strategy of the "F" method was lower than the strategies of the "D" method.

Conclusions:

The majority of search methods were less frequent and less efficient, being our proposal one of the most specific methods to locate theses published in scientific journals.

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