Search-engine co-founder Anurag Acharya explains why it now tells authors when their papers should be made free to read.
Google Scholar, the popular free search engine for scholarly literature, revealed an unexpected feature on 23 March: it is keeping track of whether research papers covered by funders’ public-access mandates are free to read.
Regardless of whether you consider it a useful tool/reminder or another invasion into academia by big tech, there can be no question as to the significance of this move. We have included links to 17 related items.
Anurag Acharya, the co-founder of Google Scholar, explained to Nature how the tracking works — and how it might change in the future.