Google Scholar

[netmouse]

www.scholar.google.com

could potentially be very cool.

>From R&D Magazine:

The folks at Google, Mountain View, Calif., have released the beta version
of its latest web-based endeavor, Google Scholar. The new, free service has
been designed to help users search scientific journals, peer-reviewed
papers, abstracts, and theses across the Web, creating a 'one-stop shopping'
experience for academics. Search results are arranged by page rank along
with the number of citations for each result.

In a related note, this past December Google forged an agreement with
several major universities such as Stanford Univ., Calif, and the Univ. of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, along with organizations such as the New York Public
Library to begin scanning and indexing bound periodicals, with the goal of
making that information available on the web.

Comments

[yuggoth.livejournal.com]

Oh god, the plagiarism possibilities...you should have seen what people were trying to pull at my grad school. You practically have to type in every paper into a piece of software to check for cheating.

Sad that such a useful tool can be so easily perverted, and that people would want to do so.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

yeah, I TA-ed when I was in Grad school. you could usually identify plagiarism by voice or change of voice. But it was tough.

And then there's the question of proving it.

[rikhei.livejournal.com]

In my experience, Google Scholar tends to provide mostly citations. Sometimes full-text options are provided, but many of those require people to pay for the articles.

That being said, the plagiarism prevention software we are testing here at work requires the students to sign up and submit their papers - the professors/TAs don't have to retype their students' papers or anything. (And to be fair, the university is also holding workshops on how to shape classes and assignments to reduce plagiarism. Some professors are also using Ken Macrorie's I-Search idea.)