On the heels of its successful public offering and new G-mail service, the Internet search engine juggernaut Google recently launched a newest search tool, Google Scholar, a free service aimed at scientists and academic researchers.

Intended to be the first stop for researchers searching for peer-reviewed papers, abstracts and scholarly papers, Google Scholar is a collaboration between the company and a group of scientific and academic publishers. The timing seems to be right, because a great many scholarly papers are indexed on the Internet but not easily accessible to the public.

The service will also include a listing of scientific citations as well as ways to find materials at libraries that are not online, which makes great sense since students and researchers have flocked in droves to Web-based search engines and away from paper catalogs that are immediately out of date.

Early on, however, this new search tool will not feature one profitable Google staple: Text ads that typically appear on the right-hand corner of every page.

The project was a personal effort by one engineer who wanted to address the severe lack of timely research materials he often encountered as a student in India and to help academia. So far, Google has received much 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.

One search engine experts predicts Google Scholar will soon have company for its services from Net-based competitors like Yahoo.

New York Times November 18, 2004