BetaKit » Scholrly Launching Search Engine for Academic Research

“Every year, there are countless academic papers published in every discipline, and graduate students and professors are constantly trying to tap into academic research from new authors around the world. Atlanta-based startup Scholrly is trying to make searching for and identifying relevant academic research easier with its new search engine for academics. Scholrly, which is launching in early June and is currently being tested by professors at Georgia Tech, allows users to search for academic papers in disciplines including computer science and IT.  The purpose of Scholrly is two-fold; it provides a search engine for academic writings, and it lets the online community get to know academics and experts in certain fields... The site then provides the link to where publication can be downloaded or purchased, which eliminates any copyright issues. Scholrly only works as the middle man between the researcher and the publisher, and it plans to monetize by partnering with publishers and authors to promote their works and help sell them. At the moment, the site is entirely self-funded.  The site will be open for beta on June 5, and will be free for users... To compete with the other search engines, Scholrly is planning to add a filtering system for searches, sorting for specific networks or groups of authors, and providing contextually relevant content. ‘We want to allow users to choose a team of professors to listen to,’ said Pon. Also, there are 1.5 million articles published per year according to Scholrly, which means the market is a large one to tackle.  Ultimately, Pon said Scholrly’s goal is ‘to compete with Google Scholar, or replace it...’