A Google Scholar API doesn't exist yet, but some people are asking for it. Reading a paper last night I had an idea for what would be a cool use of a Google Scholar API, which is taking all the citations in a reference section of a paper and adding in a citation count. I wonder if that could be done even without a formal API?What would be great would be a color coding of the references list at the end of the paper that picked out the papers with the most citations ...
Interestingly, reading the full list of the google scholar API request discussion I found mention of PaperCube, a SproutCore/SVG system that runs in a browser developed by an Apple Engineer and Master's student at Santa Clara called Peter Bergstrom. This is much much cooler than my concept, and if it was running on top of a Google Scholar API would be a total killer app for academics. Being able to navigate the web of academic citations is what every academic must currently do in their head, knowing which are the key papers that have been cited in a field. At the moment, moving into a new field is hit and miss as often the papers you get back from a search by title may be of relatively little importance to the field. The existing citation counts in Google Scholar are helpful, but you still have to conduct multiple searches to build up a picture of the field; not to mention that the workings of the Google Scholar citation calculation are black box. If we are lucky Google will release the API, make the citation calculation transparent, and something like PaperCube will run on top and make all academic:s lives that little bit easier ....
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