Wow - Google Scholar "Updates" a big step forward in sifting through the scientific literature

I logged on to Google Scholar a few minutes ago and discovered something very new

This "updates" thing was not there earlier in the day.  So I clicked on the link and got to this page: Scholar Updates: Making New Connections - Google Scholar Blog where James Connor from Google reports

Since Google Scholar launched nearly eight years ago, we’ve been helping people find the research they’re looking for.  But often the spark for discovery comes from making a new connection or looking in a direction that you hadn’t yet considered and that -- before your aha! moment -- you wouldn’t have known to look for.  Today we hope to start fostering these new connections with Scholar Updates. 

We analyze your articles (as identified in your Scholar profile), scan the entire web looking for new articles relevant to your research, and then show you the most relevant articles when you visit Scholar.  We determine relevance using a statistical model that incorporates what your work is about, the citation graph between articles, the fact that interests can change over time, and the authors you work with and cite.  You don’t need to configure updates or enter any queries.  We’ll notify you about new updates by displaying a preview on the homepage and highlighting a bell icon on search results pages: ...

To get article updates relevant to your work, all you need to do is create a public Scholar profile. Article updates will automatically start to appear within a few days. 

Wow.  Completely awesome if it works well.  So, well, let's see if it works well.  For me the system recommends the following

Evolutionary Diversity of the Mitochondrial Calcium UniporterAG Bick, SE Calvo… - Science, 2012 

REGEN: Ancestral Genome Reconstruction for BacteriaK Yang, LS Heath… - Genes, 2012

Both have some relevance to me.  The first one is about evolution of a gene family and has a line in the abstract that clearly might have driven the automated suggestion: "Here, we characterize the phylogenomic distribution of the uniporter’s membrane-spanning pore subunit (MCU) and regulatory partner (MICU1)." But, well, I am not too interested in this paper.  Not really my thing.

But paper number 2 seems a bit closer to my heart: REGEN: Ancestral Genome Reconstruction for Bacteria.  And bonus - it is freely available.  And so, well, I read over it.  And it is definitely related to what I do and I probably would not have seen it without this notification.  Cool.

So I give Scholar Updates a 1.5 / 2 score which translates to a 7.5 out of 10.  Not bad.  But could be better.  So I clicked on the "See all Updates" link to see what else was there.  And this was a pleasant surprise.  Here is what I got (showing the first page).

50 papers in all with the "Top" selection selected at the top of the page.  And some even come with a comment like Cites A phylogeny-driven genomic encyclopaedia of Bacteria and Archaea or 

Cites Environmental shotgun sequencing: its potential and challenges for ... or 

Cites Badomics words and the power and peril of the ome-meme.  

The first 25 of the papers are listed below:

1. Defining the human microbiome
2. Measures of phylogenetic differentiation provide robust and complementary insights into microbial communities
3. VIROME: a standard operating procedure for analysis of viral metagenome sequences
4. Complete Genome Sequence of Paenibacillus strain Y4. 12MC10, a Novel Paenibacillus lautus strain Isolated from Obsidian Hot Spring in Yellowstone National Park
5. Phylogenetic stratigraphy in the Guerrero Negro hypersaline microbial mat
6. Non-contiguous finished genome sequence and description of Clostridium senegalense sp. nov.
7. Non contiguous-finished genome sequence and description of Bacillus timonensis sp. nov.
8. Complete genome sequence of Pyrobaculum oguniense
9. Complete genome sequence of the moderately thermophilic mineral-sulfide-oxidizing firmicute Sulfobacillus acidophilus type strain (NALT)
10. The Metadata Coverage Index (MCI): A standardized metric for quantifying database metadata richness
11. Complete genome sequence of the aromatic-degrading deep-terrestrial-subsurface alphaproteobacterium Novosphingobium aromaticivorans type strain (F199 T), …
12. Complete genome sequence of Thauera aminoaromatica strain MZ1T
13. Non-contiguous finished genome sequence and description of Anaerococcus vaginalis
14. Non-contiguous finished genome sequence and description of Alistipes senegalensis sp. nov.
15. Metabolic potential of a single cell belonging to one of the most abundant lineages in freshwater bacterioplankton
16. Predicting kinase-substrate interactions in the era of proteomics
17. REGEN: Ancestral Genome Reconstruction for Bacteria
18. Targeted recovery of novel phylogenetic diversity from next-generation sequence data
19. A call for an international network of genomic observatories (GOs)
20. Large and linked in scientific publishing
21. The Biological Observation Matrix (BIOM) format or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the ome-ome
22. Evaluation of methods to concentrate and purify ocean virus communities through comparative, replicated metagenomics
23. Ultrafast clustering algorithms for metagenomic sequence analysis
24. IMG/M-HMP: A Metagenome Comparative Analysis System for the Human Microbiome Project
25. Microbiomes
26. Metagenomic analysis of hadopelagic microbial assemblages thriving at the deepest part of Mediterranean Sea, Matapan‐Vavilov Deep
27. Distance-Decay diversity patterns of phyllosphere bacteria on Tamarisk trees across the Sonoran Desert
28. Exposure of Soil Microbial Communities to Chromium and Arsenic Alters Their Diversity and Structure
29. Reconstruction of Ribosomal RNA Genes from Metagenomic Data
30. Genome Sequence of the Unclassified Marine Gammaproteobacterium BDW918
31. Surprising results on phylogenetic tree building methods based on molecular sequences
32. Road map of the phylum Actinobacteria
33. Building non-coding RNA families
34. Bacterial assemblages of the eastern Atlantic Ocean reveal both vertical and latitudinal biogeographic signatures
35. Metagenomic microbial community profiling using unique clade-specific marker genes
36. Unlocking the potential of metagenomics through replicated experimental design
37. Coordinating Environmental Genomics and Geochemistry Reveals Metabolic Transitions in a Hot Spring Ecosystem
38. Minimizing the average distance to a closest leaf in a phylogenetic tree
39. Parallel-META: efficient metagenomic data analysis based on high-performance computation
40. Complete genome sequence of Dehalogenimonas lykanthroporepellens type strain (BL-DC-9T) and comparison to “Dehalococcoides” strains
41. Complete genome sequence of the orange-red pigmented, radioresistant Deinococcus proteolyticus type strain (MRPT)
42. Genome sequence of the ocean sediment bacterium Saccharomonospora marina type strain (XMU15T
43. Genome sequence of the soil bacterium Saccharomonospora azurea type strain (NA-128T)
44. Evolutionary Diversity of the Mitochondrial Calcium Uniporter
45. Phylogenetic Clustering Reveals Selective Events Driving the Turnover of Bacterial Community in Alpine Tundra Soils
46. A comparative evaluation of sequence classification programs
47. Complete genome sequence of the facultatively anaerobic, appendaged bacterium Muricauda ruestringensis type strain (B1T)
48. Complete genome sequence of the termite hindgut bacterium Spirochaeta coccoides type strain (SPN1T), reclassification in the genus Sphaerochaeta as …
49. Complete genome sequence of the aquatic bacterium Runella slithyformis type strain (LSU 4T)
50. Permanent draft genome sequence of the gliding predator Saprospira grandis strain Sa g1 (= HR1)

And well, I'll be damned.  I kind of want to read almost all of them.  Son based on the top 50 I would give Scholar Updates a score of something like 47/50 or 9.4 / 10.  Many have complained about the limited developments in Google Scholar over the years but this is definitely a nice development.  I hope it means Google will be putting more effort into other developments.

Now - off to read some papers.  And if you do not have a Google Scholar page - you should definitely think about making one now as this is how you open up this feature.

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UPDATE 1 8/9 1:45 AM

Just noticed that now in the top of the page when I go to Google Scholar there is also now a link to "Updates"

UPDATE 2: 8/9 10 AM - Some other posts about this

• Google Scholar personalized updates - semantics etc.

UPDATE 3: 8/9 10 AM - Other stuff from around the web about this

• How I Learnt That “Google Scholar Has New Updates” « UK Web ...
• Google Scholar Updates on Storify
• Pedro Beltrao - Google+ - I though Google Scholar was almost on ...
• Blog Buzz: August 4 – August 10