20 things you may not know about the literature search engine Google Scholar



To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the launch of the literature search service 'Google Scholar,' the official Google blog posted '20 little-known facts about Google Scholar.'

Google Scholar turns 20: Fun facts about Google Scholar

https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/education/google-scholar-20-years/

Fact 1: The Google Scholar team started with just two people
Google Scholar was developed by Alex Verstak (left) and Anurag Acharya (right) in 2004. The initial version took about nine months to develop.



Fact 2: In the early days, researchers physically carried research files
When the service first launched, slow and unreliable internet speeds made it difficult to collect literature online, so the development team collected the physical media provided by publishers themselves.

Fact #3: Babies accelerated the release of Google Scholar
At the time of the development of Google Scholar, Verstak was planning to take parental leave for her child, and since Google Scholar was still in development when her due date approached, the development team worked all night to ensure that Verstak would be there for the birth of her child.

Fact 4: Respect for researchers
Research communities build on the foundations laid by others, which is why Google Scholar's product motto is 'standing on the shoulders of giants.'



Fact 5: Google Scholar’s Ambitions
The Google Scholar development team aims to build a massive library of books, research papers, articles, and more from all over the world in one place.

◆ Fact 6: Google Scholar PDF Reader has AI summarization function

The Google Scholar PDF Reader Chrome extension, which improves the readability of research papers, has added an AI summary function . However, at the time of writing, it only supports summaries of English papers.



◆ Fact 7: Supports case law search
Google Scholar has a case law search function, and you can search only for case law by checking the 'Case law' box on the search screen. At the time of writing, the 'Case law' checkbox is not displayed in the Japanese version of Google Scholar, so you need to change the language setting to English.



When I tried searching for 'Google,' a list of legal precedents related to Google was displayed.



Fact #8: It's easy to cite references
Clicking on 'Citation' in the search results will display the title of the literature, journal name, etc. in a format suitable for citation. Try clicking on 'Citation'.



Then, the bibliographic information was displayed in multiple formats in the center of the screen. After that, you can cite it correctly just by copying and pasting.



Fact #9: There's a feature to celebrate increased citations
When the number of citations of your paper exceeds a certain threshold, a congratulatory message will be displayed on the Google Scholar homepage. Here is an example of the message:




Fact 10: It increases the availability of literature
Google Scholar works with publishers and libraries around the world to make the literature accessible.

Fact 11: You can build a personal library
Click 'Save' in the search results to add the document to your personal library.



Fact 12: You can follow specific authors
Google Scholar allows you to follow specific authors and receive emails about their latest publications.



Fact 13: The number of research papers has increased sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic
As people were restricted from going out due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google Scholar worked with publishers to provide a service that allowed researchers to access journals they subscribe to even outside of their universities. This allowed researchers to read and study papers at home, and many papers were submitted even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fact 14: Google Scholar can help you discover surprising aspects of your family
The Google Scholar development team encourages people to search their family names in Google Scholar to discover unknown family histories.

Fact 15: Many people confess their love to Google Scholar
There are many 'confessions of love to Google Scholar' posted on social media. It seems that the number of confessions from students increases especially during final exam season.




Fact 16: You can unearth interesting literature
Google Scholar indexes a wide variety of literature. The development team presents examples such as ' a court decision that includes the titles of over 200 movies ' and ' a court decision written in the style of a hard-boiled novel .'

Fact 17: There are papers with extremely short abstracts
The abstract of a paper published in 2011 titled “Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a quantum weak measurement?” states simply, “Probably not.”



Fact 18: There is a paper written with a cat
A paper published in 1975 titled 'Two-, Three-, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc 3 He' was co-authored by a cat named

F. D. C. Willard .



Fact 19: There are studies on rare combinations
In 2020, many different topics were discussed in relation to the new coronavirus. For example, even if you search for seemingly unrelated words like 'chocolate' and 'COVID,' you will find a large number of literature hits.



Fact 20: Scientific progress requires the cooperation of many

A paper on the Higgs boson published in 2015 had more than 5,000 names as co-authors. The Google Scholar development team said, 'We've never seen such teamwork in 20 years,' and 'Scientific discoveries require the collaboration of many people.'



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in Web Service,   Science, Posted by log1o_hf