Google Launches Scholar Labs, Promising a Smarter Way to Explore Academic Research

Google has announced Scholar Labs, a new experimental feature in Google Scholar that uses AI to help users answer detailed scholarly research questions.

The tool analyses user queries to identify underlying topics, relationships, and nuances—and then searches across Google Scholar to find highly relevant academic papers.

Unlike conventional keyword search, Scholar Labs evaluates how each paper addresses parts of your overall question. For every result, it provides explanations of how the research aligns with different aspects of the query. Users can also ask follow-up questions to explore additional subtleties.

The feature is currently available to logged-in users who write in English and is being rolled out to a limited audience as an experimental preview. Google emphasises that Scholar Labs represents “a new direction” and they plan to refine the system based on user feedback.

It believes that the tool could fundamental­ly change how researchers interact with academic literature by letting them ask more ambitious questions—such as “how does caffeine affect memory across age groups?”—and getting structured, context-aware results.

Google is encouraging interested users to register for the waitlist ahead of a wider release.