There are geeks and there are nerds, so the Eighties told us (dorks and dweebs, too, but these have yet reach to any type of social prominence). You may have guessed by now that I’m a nerd – I like to study. Google Scholar’s new addition, then, will just increase the hours I spend in ancient civilizations — for another, their time in quarks.
Yes, Earthlink says “a geek gets it done and a nerd doesn’t,” but keep in mind who said it. Nerds get plenty done, we just can’t express it in zeroes and ones.
For example, given a day or two with Google Scholar’s new feature that allows researchers to keep up with the latest research (look to the top right to find the link to “Recent articles”), I can tell you the latest findings on the type of alchemy used by the Oracle of Delphi, or the works of Flavius Josephus.
Or even, if I’m lucky, the latest discussions of Borges’ intriguing character Droctulftcurrently there are only four discussions of our loveable barbarian, so surely someone in the future will bring him up?
Google software engineer Dejan Perkovic explains the new feature:
It’s not just a plain sort by date, but rather we try to rank recent papers the way researchers do, by looking at the prominence of the author’s and journal’s previous papers, how many citations it already has, when it was written, and so on
Scholarly endeavors are about learning what has already been done and building on it. We hope this feature will help researchers worldwide learn from and build on the latest advances.
That includes the latest advances in the new religion of science, quantum physics, an area where nerds and geeks can coexist so as there is someone to explain to the geek what has just happened in his experiment that turned out screwy. Schroedenger’s cat, anyone?
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