Google Scholar is celebrating its tenth birthday. It has had a major impact on higher education during its first decade. In some institutions, Google Scholar citations are a key metric for decisions about promotion and tenure. Google Scholar has made it easier to do literature searches that encompass relatively obscure, non-US journals, which promotes the democratization and internationalization of knowledge. Most importantly, Google Scholar has made it easier for people in developing countries to access academic knowledge.
The website Medium has published a great profile of the inventor of Google Scholar:
Anurag Acharya is the key inventor of Google Scholar, but the real origin of the project lies in his college years at the Kharagpur campus of the Indian Institute of Technology. The IIT is India’s version of MIT and Stanford combined, and has produced a long list of now-celebrated engineers and executives at Internet companies here and abroad. But even in that elite school, it was difficult for students to get hold of relevant scholarly materials.
The whole thing is worth a read.
The Past Speaks 
Leave a Reply