Google Scholar - search Research!

Google scholar is a new search service aimed at scientists and academic researchers. All major scientific and research publications indexed on the web is now accessible universally.

This is a blessing for students who want to research on certain specific topics for their projects/dissertations.

A query for "fast fourier transforms" for example, pulls up 30,800 references along the left-hand side of the page, clearly identified as articles from the Web, or pointing to offline material such as citations or books, which when clicked on are presented much in the same manner as a library card catalog.

"Google as a company has greatly benefited from academic research and this is one of the ways we can give back to the community," - Anurag Acharya, Project Lead, Google Scholar

I remember while I was student, I would spend hours at the library looking for certain specific publications of IEEE for my final year project. The only other alternative were the online search engines. How I wish Google Scholar was available then!

It makes me wonder - will the Scholar turn out to be the perfect tool for plagiarizing?