Scholarfy

Reclaiming Google Scholar

by Johan Ugander
jugander {at} stanford.edu

Installation

To install, drag this link to your bookmark bar:
Scholarfy

About

Scholarfy is a simple bookmarklet to transfer Google/Bing search queries to Google Scholar, which was recently demoted to a third-tier service by the latest Google Bar redesign.

This restores how Google Scholar used to work: when searching the web for a query, switching to a scholar query was a one-click operation. When Scholar was demoted to being behind the 'Even more' sub-submenu, this functionality broke.

Scholarfy simply lifts the current search query out of the active Google/Bing search page and passes it to Google Scholar. By clicking the installed bookmarklet, your query will be effortlessly switched to a Google Scholar query.

Scholarfy works in Chrome/Firefox, and is simple enough that I have a hard time imagining platforms where it wouldn't work. If you have suggestions on improvements, drop me a line at the email address above..!

Adaptations

C. Sean Burns contacted me to share his generalization of the bookmarklet to transfer queries to OpenLibrary, WorldCat, and other services. This is indeed a straightforward change, see the Misc section of his homepage for his adaptations.

See also: