The early days
1. The crew began with simply two of us. Again in 2004, entry to tutorial data was troublesome to navigate and infrequently restricted behind paywalls. We wished to make it attainable for researchers to have the ability to discover and browse what their friends had written. After 9 months of growth, our imaginative and prescient got here to life as Google Scholar, which might find yourself making it straightforward for individuals to find and interact with analysis.
2. We bodily delivered recordsdata at first. Within the early days of Google Scholar, sluggish, flaky web speeds made it exhausting to assemble analysis to construct this on-line analysis library. As a workaround, the crew embraced a low-tech answer dubbed the “Sneakernet.” As a substitute of relying solely on sluggish downloads, publishers would load articles on bodily exhausting drives and we might choose up these drives on the best way to the workplace.
3. A child set the deadline for launching Scholar. It was crunch time main as much as Thanksgiving, and Alex was awaiting the beginning of his son, Nicholas. He was heading out on paternity depart shortly, however we nonetheless had a variety of work to convey Scholar into the world. We pulled some all-nighters to fulfill our deadline — and to ensure Alex wouldn’t miss the beginning of his little one.
4. Scholar’s product motto pays tribute to our fellow researchers. Within the analysis neighborhood, we construct on the inspiration laid by others, therefore our product motto: “Standing on the shoulders of giants.” It is a testomony to the collaborative nature of discovery and Scholar’s aim to assist researchers in every single place readily entry and construct upon the accrued data of those that have come earlier than. We hope to at all times have the ability to assist researchers in every single place see additional.
5. Our aim is to make Scholar complete. Think about a library with tons of books, articles and analysis papers, in quite a few languages, from each nook of the world. That’s what we goal to do with Scholar. On its index, you’ll find peer-reviewed on-line tutorial journals and books, convention papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical experiences and different scholarly literature.
