Google Plans New Service for Scientists and Scholars

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dave () farber net
Date: November 18, 2004 6:44:30 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Google Plans New Service for Scientists  
and Scholars
Reply-To: dave () farber net

The article below from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by dave () farber net.



/--------- E-mail Sponsored by Fox Searchlight ------------\

SIDEWAYS - NOW PLAYING IN SELECT CITIES

An official selection of the New York Film Festival and the
Toronto International Film Festival, SIDEWAYS is the new
comedy from Alexander Payne, director of ELECTION and ABOUT
SCHMIDT.  Starring Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church,
Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen. Watch the trailer at:

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/sideways/index_nyt.html

\----------------------------------------------------------/


Google Plans New Service for Scientists and Scholars

November 18, 2004
 By JOHN MARKOFF





SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 - Google Inc. plans to announce on
Thursday that it is adding a new search service aimed at
scientists and academic researchers.

Google Scholar, which was scheduled to go online Wednesday
evening at scholar.google.com, is a result of the company's
collaboration with a number of scientific and academic
publishers and is intended as a first stop for researchers
looking for scholarly literature like peer-reviewed papers,
books, abstracts and technical reports.

Google executives declined to say how many additional
documents and books had been indexed and made searchable
through the service. While the great majority of recent
scholarly papers and periodicals are indexed on the Web,
many have not been easily accessible to the public.

The engineer who led the project, Anurag Acharya, said the
company had received broad cooperation from academic,
scientific and technical publishers like the Association of
Computing Machinery, Nature, the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers and the Online Computer Library
Center.

The new Google service, which includes a listing of
scientific citations as well as ways to find materials at
libraries that are not online, will not initially include
the text advertisements that are shown on standard pages
for Google search results.

However, company executives say it is likely that
advertisements will eventually accompany search results on
Google Scholar. One academic publishing executive, John
Sack, director of HighWire Press at Stanford University,
said that such advertising could be quite profitable.

"The commercial reason for doing this is that you can
target areas with high-quality, high-payback ads," Mr. Sack
said. "An advertisement that goes next to an article on
cloning techniques is probably going to be for services
that are pretty expensive."

Mr. Acharya, who started the Google Scholar project, said
his motivation, in part, had been a desire to help the
academic community from which Google emerged.

"Google as a company has greatly benefited from academic
research and this is one of the ways we can give back to
the community," he said.

The project was also an effort, said Mr. Acharya, 39, to
address a problem he confronted as an undergraduate in
India. As a student he found materials in his college
library, at times, to be significantly out of date.

Google Scholar will make the world's scientific literature
universally accessible, he said.

"We don't know where the next breakthrough will come from,"
he said. "We want everyone to be able to stand on the
shoulders of giants."

"Google's scientific search service is a significant step
forward," said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchWatchEngine,
an online newsletter. He was quick to add, however, that
Google was certain to have competition soon from Yahoo and
others.

"We will continue to see an explosion of vertical search
engines like this," he said of search services that focus
on special collections.

Google Scholar is another reflection of changing habits in
the academic world, said Mr. Sack of HighWire Press. In the
past decade, students and researchers have begun to go to
online search engines first.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/technology/18google.html? 
ex=1101778270&ei=1&en=70c7b1d966a29337


---------------------------------

Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine
reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like!
Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy
now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here:

http://homedelivery.nytimes.com/HDS/SubscriptionT1.do? 
mode=SubscriptionT1&ExternalMediaCode=W24AF



HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
or other creative advertising opportunities with The
New York Times on the Web, please contact
onlinesales () nytimes com or visit our online media
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo

For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help () nytimes com.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/