Right now, the Academic lens is great for finding freely available content from educational institutions, but most high-quality peer-reviewed research is locked behind databases which either do not offer access to individuals, or do so at prohibitively expensive costs. If you're not affiliated with a university, you're pretty much out of luck unless you want to pay exorbitant per-article fees.
I think it would be cool if Kagi offered a product tailored specifically for research. The idea would be for Kagi to negotiate licensing agreements with these database providers so that users could find and access academic content. This would come at a cost, of course, but I think it would be worth it if it could get consumers across the moat traditionally upheld by institutions.
This would be a game-changer for independent researchers, journalists, writers, and lifelong learners who don't have institutional access. It would also be a massive differentiator for Kagi since, as far as I can tell, no consumer search engine currently offers anything like this. And if Assistant could use this material, it would make it the smartest AI researcher out there.
I realize the business side of this would be complex—negotiating with academic publishers isn't trivial—but if Kagi could pull it off, it would fill a genuine gap in the market and provide incredible value for users who care about accessing quality sources.
