Resource: Google Scholar ‘Updates’ a big step forward in sifting through the scientific literature

Wow – Google Scholar ‘Updates’ a big step forward in sifting through the scientific literature | Impact of Social Sciences.

I logged on to Google Scholar last week and discovered something very new. This “updates” thing was not there earlier in the day.  So I clicked on the link and got to this page: Scholar Updates: Making New Connections – Google Scholar Blog where James Connor from Google reports:

“Since Google Scholar launched nearly eight years ago, we’ve been helping people find the research they’re looking for.  But often the spark for discovery comes from making a new connection or looking in a direction that you hadn’t yet considered and that — before your aha! moment — you wouldn’t have known to look for.  Today we hope to start fostering these new connections with Scholar Updates.

We analyze your articles (as identified in your Scholar profile), scan the entire web looking for new articles relevant to your research, and then show you the most relevant articles when you visit Scholar. We determine relevance using a statistical model that incorporates what your work is about, the citation graph between articles, the fact that interests can change over time, and the authors you work with and cite. You don’t need to configure updates or enter any queries. We’ll notify you about new updates by displaying a preview on the homepage and highlighting a bell icon on search results pages: …

To get article updates relevant to your work, all you need to do is create a public Scholar profile. Article updates will automatically start to appear within a few days”.