Google Scholar as the co-producer of scholarly knowledge

Search engines in general, and Google Scholar in particular, are co-producers of academic knowledge. They have a profound impact on the way knowledge is generated, transmitted, and distributed. This chapter first explores how Google Scholar works as a human-technological system in order to analyze the site’s technology in combination with its inscribed usage and its actual use and users. The chapter then scrutinize the complex power relationships of digital networks with Google at its epicenter. Following Manuel Castells’s (2009) proposal to "unwire" the construction of academic knowledge through the coded dynamics of search engines, the author examines the larger legal and political-economic implications of the platform’s architecture and organized structure. Combining these two layers of analysis should inform an enriched type of information literacy.