Take a look at "Search engines make us dumb" by Jonathan Gordon-Till. The title says it all. There's not much for me to add to the very perceptive comments on this article over at the ResourceShelf, where I originally saw this posting. Favourite quote: "No search engine can cause the same degree of discovery as the human brain. Yet we are happy to abrogate our responsibility to use our brains optimally." This whole google / search engine / open access journals / information literacy melange of things all relate to each other. With the ground shifting beneath our feet so quickly, it can sometimes be hard to see the forest for the rather distressing trees, sometimes.