Carlo Schuengel
Steve B HoltI hope the two guys that keep Google Scholar going as a pet project didn't get laid off. Just as a quiet reminder of the fragile contingency of this core academic service.
Ruth Mottram@SteveBHolt there is of course now the internet archive scholar, which seems to work as well as Google scholar. May or may not be as fragile as the Google version but at least there's a back up!
Christian Pietsch (old acct.)
Lambert Heller@chpietsch @Ruth_Mottram @SteveBHolt Yes, @base deserves more attention, IA Scholarly as well. Another one I'd throw in: @OpenAlex. Have a look at their surprisingly good and complete journal metadata from a plethora of sources, matching of authors as well as institutions names, citation graph, and on top of that, all metadata is free (CC0, the real deal), and access via API ist possible.
OpenAlex@Lambo @chpietsch @Ruth_Mottram @SteveBHolt @base Yes, please have a look at us! We have huge coverage, a serious sustainability plan, and we're already being used by libraries, rankings, and bibliometricians around the globe. https://openalex.org
Jonathan Horowitz@OpenAlex Interesting. Is there a way to "claim" a profile like with Google Scholar?
@jonathanhorowi1 There will be soon! In the meantime, we are taking requests for corrections to author data via this form: https://openalex.org/author-change-request
Christoph Thiede 
@Ruth_Mottram @SteveBHolt Without a citation graph, this tool looks only half as useful to me.
@LinqLover @SteveBHolt I prefer tools like connected papers than citation graphs now. I wrote up a bit about these on my blog here: http://sternaparadisaea.net/2022/11/28/literature-searching-the-fediverse/
@Ruth_Mottram @SteveBHolt Yeah, connected papers is great, but unfortunately not free any longer.
maya 
now at catgirl.global@LinqLover @Ruth_Mottram @SteveBHolt
Uhhhh yeah that seems to work a bit like https://researchrabbit.ai (which afaik is free)
gvdr 
@SteveBHolt
As we pray for those who maintain (do they? are they still there?) the academic APIs for Meta, YT, Twitter (!), ...
As we pray for those who maintain (do they? are they still there?) the academic APIs for Meta, YT, Twitter (!), ...
Albert Cardona@SteveBHolt Great point, about time that such core academic service is transferred back to university libraries where it belongs. For the time being, there’s https://scholar.archive.org (a charity organisation) which works pleasantly well, and doesn’t play the game of citations and h-index and similar rubbish metrics of academic performance, focusing instead on archiving and ensuring access to the papers.
Nemo_bis 🌈@albertcardona "transferred back to #university #libraries where it belongs"
Agreed, but how to prevent such a service from turning into another extractive monopolist like JSTOR or OCLC?
@nemobis Ensure an association of multiple public universities is in charge—so as to make it impossible, by committee, for it to change hands—and establish the charter with strong statutes that prevent such take over. Many charities have existed for centuries in one form or another. An academic library should be able to as well.
@albertcardona Do you know any example of this proposed structure?
So far the only successful publicly owned services I've seen in USA are owned and run directly by state universities.
Hao Ye@albertcardona @SteveBHolt I find it very tragic that folks hope for continuity of services run by for-profit data companies and don't imagine or work towards a future where the data and services are collectively built and maintained.
Giorgos Diakoulakis 
@albertcardona
IMO, one of the great services provided by google scholar is the ability to extract pubs in any citation format I wanted, mostly bibtex. Scopus has a similar service but it does not work as flawless as google scholar
Every entry at https://scholar.archive.org has a "quote" button: click it, and you are offered citations in these formats: MLA, Harvard, CSL-JSON and BibTeX. And note BibTeX can be imported into all kinds of citation tracking programs (ORCID, EndNote, Zotero, and more) or simply copy-pasted into your .bib file.
Matt@SteveBHolt Fave Google Scholar bug lately: ghost citations. GS says paper X cites paper Y. It doesn’t. 🤷 😢
Stephan Eggermont@infinimatt @SteveBHolt that’s the new ChatGPT compatibility feature
Sibylle Hess@SteveBHolt semantic scholar for the win!
Jeremy Kun@SteveBHolt it's a team of like 8 or so full timers, actually. They are not in any danger.
Josh@SteveBHolt
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of PTR committees and deans cried out in terror ... but in all seriousness I'm about to have students embark on a research project for which none of our university's research publications subscriptions are particularly useful so this would be a rather harsh development.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of PTR committees and deans cried out in terror ... but in all seriousness I'm about to have students embark on a research project for which none of our university's research publications subscriptions are particularly useful so this would be a rather harsh development.
Bunnyjadwiga@SteveBHolt
Well that's a sickening jolt to the gut.
Well that's a sickening jolt to the gut.
Stanisław Krawczyk@SteveBHolt Wow, it really is two guys? Would you be able to recommend some reading on this? If so, thanks in advance!
@stanislawkrawczyk Yes, in that two senior engineers founded it and have been the main people keeping it going. They have 8 staff on their team, but it's basically still what it is because of the original two developers protecting it as a passion project. I point to reading here in other replies: https://sciences.social/@SteveBHolt/109733936775412393
Steve B Holt (@[email protected])
Attached: 4 images @[email protected] The latter. There are 8 staff that work under the two founding engineers, but they are basically who matters for maintaining it and it has already been tagged as not a core service. You can read about the founding here and the back half paints the picture of how core the founder is to it. https://www.wired.com/2014/10/the-gentleman-who-made-scholar/
@SteveBHolt Thank you, I’ll read up on this!
Nina🐀🌻WTAF America?@SteveBHolt Well this is terrifying. I thought it was one of their main projects. Importance is in the eye of the user, I guess. The Library Links feature is super good and not replicated elsewhere for free (that I know of).
@ratgrrl Unfortunately it is not. Two engineers started it as a passion project and they are the main advocates that keep it going. They have a team of 8 staff, but it was flagged as not a core product years ago so without the two seniors that started it protecting and maintaining it, it's unclear how long any of it would last - particularly in its current form.
Brett Glass - WY7BG@SteveBHolt Google Scholar is a lobbying activity; it’s purpose is to ingratiate academics to Google. And it’s worked.
Ethics demand that it be spun off as a neutral nonprofit if not disbanded.
Maria Antoniak@SteveBHolt For those worried, you might like to know about Semantic Scholar, which is a nonprofit and has a large team of researchers and engineers: https://www.semanticscholar.org/
Nichol Brummer@SteveBHolt they should be at Los Alamos, working with whoever is now looking after the preprint arxiv.org servers .. started by one guy long ago
Terry Bucknell@Nichol arXiv moved to Cornell in 2001, when Paul Ginsparg moved there.
arborelia@SteveBHolt I think it is not great that those two guys won't let trans people change names, even when many publishers do.
Not that I'm wishing layoffs on anyone, but, this is one of many reasons academia needs to find an alternative to Google Scholar.
@SteveBHolt If Google Scholar goes to the Google Graveyard someday, cis academics will be inconvenienced for like a month until they learn about Internet Archive Scholar, and trans academics will have an unprecedented improvement in their career prospects.
flopska@SteveBHolt Trying to use https://dblp.org/ to update my bibfiles. -- But sure, for looking at "Who cited this?", scholar gets the first query. I didn't even know that it is a pet project, thanks for clarifying.
DBLP has more consistency than scholar in its generated bibtex. Then there's also MrLookup (https://mathscinet.ams.org/mrlookup) but its index isn't as comprehensive for CS.
Julien Colomb@SteveBHolt i literally never use google scholar.
If i do literature search, i go base https://www.base-search.net/