Search engines and the production of academic knowledge

This article argues that search engines in general, and Google Scholar in particular, have become significant co-producers of academic knowledge. Knowledge is not simply conveyed to users, but is co-produced by search engines’ ranking systems and profiling systems, none of which are open to the rules of transparency, relevance and privacy in a manner known from library scholarship in the public domain. Inexperienced users tend to trust proprietary engines as neutral mediators of knowledge and are commonly ignorant of how meta-data enable engine operators to interpret collective profiles of groups of searchers. Theorizing search engines as nodal points in networks of distributed power, based on the notions of Manuel Castells, this article urges for an enriched form of information literacy to include a basic understanding of the economic, political and socio-cultural dimensions of search engines. Without a basic understanding of network architecture, the dynamics of network connections and their intersections, it is hard to grasp the social, legal, cultural and economic implications of search engines.