Catherine Brahic, Google launches free search engine for academic texts, SciDev.Net, November 24, 2004. Excerpt: 'The service has received mixed reviews from the academic community. Their main hesitation reflects Google's unwillingness to reveal who participated in the search engine's development. Duane Webster, head of the Association of Research Libraries told The Scientist there were concerns over this lack of information and with "Google's unwillingness to describe how it defines what is scholarly". Some proponents of the open access movement, which supports making all academic literature free to access online, have suggested that the service might better serve the community if it were to scan open access literature only. However, David Spurrett, a researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, points out that his first concern is to find out what literature exists on a given topic. Only once he knows this, does he worry about which papers he can and cannot get hold of.' (PS: One correction. I haven't heard any proponents of OA wish that GS would only index OA content. But I have heard several wish that GS would either label the OA content or let users apply a filter to display only OA content. There's a big difference.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/26/2004 04:30:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
