Google has already transformed the way the web is used. Now the company behind the internet's leading search engine aims to change the academic world too, with a new search tool putting a treasure trove of scholarly writing within the reach of everyday users.
Following moves to make scientific research freely available, Google Scholar allows any internet user to search for keywords in theses, books, technical reports, university websites and even traditional academic publications.
The free system, which is being run initially in test form and can be seen at www.scholar.google.com spans the academic disciplines from medicine and physics to economics and computer science.
As well as improving access to research for students and professionals, Google Scholar offers a chance for the general public to get better access to scientific data.
A Google Scholar search for articles relating to a supposed link between the MMR jab and autism, for instance, produced up to date research from several reputable sources.
Rather than ranking results by the number of "hits" or visits they have received, Google Scholar ranks results in order of relevance, which includes the number of times the research itself has been cited by other academics.
"Google tends to be quite useful but the way it displays hits means you get the hits that are most widely accessed," said Mike Joy, senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Warwick. "In an academic context, that's not what you want."
Trying the new search engine for the first time, Dr Joy was impressed. "My first impression is that it looks quite effective. It's pulled out papers I've written almost immediately." Requests for relatively obscure information also yielded intelligible results. "It doesn't seem to be producing random stuff that you normally get."
The new tool comes as a debate rages within the publishing world over so-called open access to scientific research. In July, a committee of MPs warned of "mounting concern that financial benefits from the government's substantial investment in research are being diverted to an excessive degree into the pockets of publishers' shareholders."
The Commons science and technology committee recommended that results of publicly funded scientific research carried out in Britain should be made freely available to everyone over the internet.
It called for experimentation with a new model, known as open access publishing, where the author pays for publication but the resulting article is freely available over the web.
It also called for academics to be allowed to place copies of articles already published in subscription journals on their own website or in an online repository run by their university - a process known as author self-archiving.
While the government rejected the committee's findings earlier this month, publishers such as Reed Elsevier have changed copyright rules to allow their authors to archive their own work.
But until now searching for these articles has been a complex process for the general public. Google Scholar presented a significant step forward for the open access movement, said Jan Velterop, of the open access publisher BioMed Central.
"We are very pleased Google have taken this step. This will really increase the access to and visibility of research deposited in repositories - it's a huge boost to the drive to provide open access to research," he added.
Mars shines but Hamlet is out of the question
The Guardian tested Google Scholar by searching under five headings: "The Battle of Hastings", "To be or not to be", "Eminem", "Life on Mars", and "The structure of DNA". The idea was to find out whether it would be useful to non-specialists as well as experts.
The Battle of Hastings
Type in the name of the most famous battle in English history and the top item turns out to be details of Max Hastings' book The Battle for the Falklands.
The first 40 or so hits yield little solid information about William the Conqueror, King Harold and so on, just passing references in academic papers on language, landscapes and even astronomy.
A promising reference around result 60 turns out to be no more than a list of history books on the University of Oxford's website.
Adding "1066" at least throws up a lecture schedule for medieval studies at Manchester Metropolitan University and some relevant books. But no papers that say much more than "The date of the Battle of Hastings is 1066" (On Language and the Passage of Time, Western Washington University).
Some of the best information is to be found in the promotional booklet Short Breaks and Holidays in Battle, Bexhill. William the Conqueror appears to be being airbrushed from history.
Marks: 4/10
"To be or not to be"
Students of English literature hoping to impress their tutors with a little extra insight into Hamlet's speech will be disappointed.
The problem seems to be that just too many scholars have pinched the quote for their scientific papers.
If you want to know about subjects ranging from binge eating to bone marrow, from family houses in Ghanaian cities to the politics of Quebec, bang in the opening lines of the soliloquy.
The play does not even get a mention until the result 74, and even then it is in a paper on internet domain names.
Even adding "+ Hamlet" to the search does not help. As for learning more about Ophelia, let alone Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ...
Marks: 3/10
Structure of DNA
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google Scholar performs much better on scientific subjects. Searches for nuclear fission, seabed visualisation, and neutrino oscillation yielded reams of relevant information.
Many of the top results seem to come from the same site, the National Library of Medicine in the US. Perhaps because the tool is still at the testing stage, the ability to remove a particular website from the search, as can be done in Google, has not been incorporated.
Marks: 7/10
Life on Mars
Plenty here for a student of astronomy as well as the expert: everything you could wish to know about the Viking missions to Mars, about strategies being developed for future visits to the red planet, about what sort of unmanned vehicles best negotiate its terrain.
Try searching for life on Mars on many other engines and you will find the views of the conspiracy theorists and extraterrestrial kooks mixed in with the science. Google Scholar's selection feels much more weighty.
Marks: 8/10
Eminem
The Detroit rapper has a paltry 212 references on the site (compared with 4,000 for Whitney Houston), starting with the Rolling Stone and The Nation, and a review of his film 8Mile.
But delve deeper and there some interesting papers, on racial politics in pop music, and the portrayal of violence against women in rap music, although most only mention the rapper in passing. A paper on rap music and poetry specifically focusing on Eminem from a US university can be read in full.
Marks: 5/10
Faisal al Yafai and Steven Morris