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Which Search Engine Is the Best?

When looking up something online, your choice of search engines can impact what you find. Search queries are typed into a search bar while the search engine locates website links corresponding to the query. Here are the best five search engines to use.

Google Stays on Top

Google continues to be the leading cyber search engine. While the leader of this pack can change, no one is close to Google. Internet users even refer to web searches as “googling.” Estimates indicate 1,800,000,000 unique visitors use Google each month. That’s huge. Netmarketshare’s November 2018 report indicated that 73 percent of the Internet population used Google for their searches. Another 81 percent are said to use it as a search engine on their mobile devices. The Google logo is multi-colored and easily-recognized.

Bing Ranks Second

Bing ranks second in command, falling far behind Google with search popularity. It’s a Microsoft search engine and the default search engine for Windows PCs. Even with Microsoft’s backing, it hasn’t come close to catching Google. Approximately 500,000,000 unique visitors use it each month with a steady traffic rate. While that’s a significant number, Bing only holds an estimated 7.91 percent of the search market, according to the Netmarketshare report.

Yahoo is another top search engine. It’s a popular email service provider and the default search engine for Mozilla Firefox browsers. With about 490,000,000 unique users each month, it’s not too far behind Bing and a long way off from Google. The logo includes the exclamation point possibly as an enthusiastic sign. Still many people choose Yahoo! for their preferred search engine.

The bright red circle with white lettering in the middle is the no-fuss logo of Ask.com. Ask.com relies on a format of questions and answers from users and uses polls for data collection. Formerly known as Ask Jeeves, it has a small share of the search engine traffic with less than one percent. Nearly 300,000,000 unique users give it a try each month.

AOL.com has been around for some time, but currently holds only 0.06 percent of the search engine share of traffic. Since 2015, AOL.com has been part of Verizon Communications when they acquired the search engine. The network includes familiar websites like huffingtonpost.com and engadget.com. As a search engine, it gets an estimated 200,000,000 unique visitors monthly. There are many other search engines, and individuals can try out several to find their best match. Some are more user-friendly than others while others might block more ads.

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The top list of academic search engines

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

• 1. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
• Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
• Related articles: ✔
• References: ✔
• Cited by: ✔
• Links to full text: ✔
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
• Abstracts: ✔
• Related articles: ✘
• References: ✘
• Cited by: ✘
• Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
• Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
• Export formats: BibTeX

• 4. Science.gov

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
• Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

• 5. Semantic Scholar

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

• Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

• 6. Baidu Scholar

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
• Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
• Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
• Export formats: not available

• Frequently Asked Questions about academic search engines

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

• Related Articles

28 Best Academic Search Engines That make your research easier

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If you’re a researcher or scholar, you know that conducting effective online research is a critical part of your job. And if you’re like most people, you’re always on the lookout for new and better ways to do it. 

I’m sure you are familiar with some research databases. But, top researchers keep an open mind and are always looking for inspiration in unexpected places. 

This article aims to give you an edge over researchers that rely mainly on Google for their entire research process.

Our list of 28 academic search engines will start with the more familiar to less.

Table of Contents

#1. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an academic search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.

Great for academic research, you can use Google Scholar to find articles from academic journals, conference proceedings, theses, and dissertations. The results returned by Google Scholar are typically more relevant and reliable than those from regular search engines like Google.

Tip: You can restrict your results to peer-reviewed articles only by clicking on the “Scholarly”

• Scholarly results are typically more relevant and reliable than those from regular search engines like Google.
• You can restrict your results to peer-reviewed articles only by clicking on the “Scholarly” tab.
• Google Scholar database Coverage is extensive, with approx. 200 million articles indexed.
• Abstracts are available for most articles.
• Related articles are shown, as well as the number of times an article has been cited.
• Links to full text are available for many articles.
• Abstracts are only a snippet of the full article, so you might need to do additional searching to get the full information you need.
• Not all articles are available in full text.

Google Scholar is completely free.

#2. ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) 

ERIC (short for educational resources information center) is a great academic search engine that focuses on education-related literature. It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and produced by the Institute of Education Sciences. 

ERIC indexes over a million articles, reports, conference papers, and other resources on all aspects of education from early childhood to higher education. So, search results are more relevant to Education on ERIC. 

• Extensive coverage: ERIC indexes over a million articles, reports, and other resources on all aspects of education from early childhood to higher education.
• You can limit your results to peer-reviewed journals by clicking on the “Peer-Reviewed” tab.
• Great search engine for educators, as abstracts are available for most articles.

ERIC is a free online database of education-related literature. 

#3. Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a “computational knowledge engine” that can answer factual questions posed in natural language. It can be a useful search tool. 

Type in a question like “What is the square root of 64?” or “What is the boiling point of water?” and Wolfram Alpha will give you an answer.

Wolfram Alpha can also be used to find academic articles. Just type in your keywords and Wolfram Alpha will generate a list of academic articles that match your query.

Tip: You can restrict your results to peer-reviewed journals by clicking on the “Scholarly” tab.

• Can answer factual questions posed in natural language.
• Can be used to find academic articles.
• Results are ranked by relevance.
• Results can be overwhelming, so it’s important to narrow down your search criteria as much as possible.
• The experience feels a bit more structured but it could also be a bit restrictive

Wolfram Alpha offers a few pricing options, including a “Pro” subscription that gives you access to additional features, such as the ability to create custom reports. You can also purchase individual articles or download them for offline use.

Pro costs $5.49 and Pro Premium costs $9.99

#4. iSEEK Education 

iSEEK is a search engine targeting students, teachers, administrators, and caregiver. It’s designed to be safe with editor-reviewed content.

iSEEK Education also includes a “Cited by” feature which shows you how often an article has been cited by other researchers.

• Editor-reviewed content.
• “Cited by” feature shows how often an article has been cited by other researchers.
• Limited to academic content.
• Doesn’t have the breadth of coverage that some of the other academic search engines have.

iSEEK Education is free to use.

#5. BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that’s where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine). 

Known as “one of the most comprehensive academic web search engines,” it contains over 100 million documents from 4,000 different sources. 

Users can narrow their search using the advanced search option, so regardless of whether you need a book, a review, a lecture, a video or a thesis, BASE has what you need.

BASE indexes academic articles from a variety of disciplines, including the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

• One of the world’s most voluminous search engines, 
• Indexes academic articles from a variety of disciplines, especially for academic web resources
• Includes an “Advanced Search” feature that lets you restrict your results to peer-reviewed journals.
• Doesn’t include abstracts for most articles.
• Doesn’t have related articles, references, cited by

BASE is free to use.

CORE is an academic search engine that focuses on open access research papers. A link to the full text PDF or complete text web page is supplied for each search result. It’s academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers.

• Focused on open access research papers.
• Links to full text PDF or complete text web page are supplied for each search result.
• Export formats include BibTeX, Endnote, RefWorks, Zotero.
• Coverage is limited to open access research papers.
• No abstracts are available for most articles.
• No related articles, references, or cited by features.

CORE is free to use.

#7. Science.gov

Science.gov is a search engine developed and managed by the United States government. It includes results from a variety of scientific databases, including NASA, EPA, USGS, and NIST. 

US students are more likely to have early exposure to this tool for scholarly research. 

• Coverage from a variety of scientific databases (200 million articles and reports).
• Links to full text are available for some articles.

Science.gov is free to use.

#8. Semantic Scholar

Semantic Scholar is a recent entrant to the field. Its goal is to provide more relevant and effective search results via artificial intelligence-powered methods that detect hidden relationships and connections between research topics.

• Powered by artificial intelligence, which enhances search results.
• Covers a large number of academic articles (approx. 40 million).
• Related articles, references, and cited by features are all included.
• Links to full text are available for most articles.

Semantic Scholar is free to use.

#9. RefSeek

RefSeek searches more than five billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.

This is one of the free search engines that feels like Yahoo with a massive directory. It could be good when you are just looking for research ideas from unexpected angles. It could lead you to some other database that you might not know such as the CIA The World Factbook, which is a great reference tool.

• Searches more than five billion documents.
• The Documents tab is very focused on research papers and easy to use.
• Results can be filtered by date, type of document, and language.
• Good source for free academic articles, open access journals, and technical reports.
• The navigation and user experience is very dated even to millenials…
• It requires more than 3 clicks to dig up interesting references (which is how it could lead to you something beyond the 1st page of Google)
• The top part of the results are ALL ads (well… it’s free to use)

RefSeek is free to use.

#10. ResearchGate 

A mixture of social networking site + forum + content databases where researchers can build their profile, share research papers, and interact with one another.

Although it is not an academic search engine that goes outside of its site, ResearchGate ‘s library of works offers an excellent choice for any curious scholar.

There are more than 100 million publications available on the site from over 11 million researchers. It is possible to search by publication, data, and author, as well as to ask the researchers questions. 

• A great place to find research papers and researchers.
• Can follow other researchers and get updates when they share new papers or make changes to their profile.
• The network effect can be helpful in finding people who have expertise in a particular topic.
• Interface is not as user friendly
• Can be overwhelming when trying to find relevant papers.
• Some papers are behind a paywall.

ResearchGate is free to use.

#11. DataONE Search (formerly CiteULike) 

A social networking site for academics who want to share and discover academic articles and papers.

• A great place to find academic papers that have been shared by other academics.
• Some papers are behind a paywall

CiteULike is free to use.

#12. DataElixir 

DataElixir is deigned to help you find, understand and use data. It includes a curated list of the best open datasets, tools and resources for data science.

• Dedicated resource for finding open data sets, tools, and resources for data science.
• The website is easy to navigate.
• The content is updated regularly
• The resources are grouped by category.
• Not all of the resources are applicable to academic research.
• Some of the content is outdated.

DataElixir is free to use.

#13. LazyScholar – browser extension

LazyScholar is a free browser plugin that helps you discover free academic full texts, metrics, and instant citation and sharing links. Lazy Scholar is created Colby Vorland, a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University.

• It can integrate with your library to find full texts even when you’re off-campus.
• Saves your history and provides an interface to find it.
• A pre-formed citation is availlable in over 900 citation styles.
• Can recommend you topics and scans new PubMed listings to suggest new papers
• Results can be a bit hit or miss

LazyScholar is free to use.

#14. CiteseerX – digital library from PenState

CiteseerX is a digital library stores and indexes research articles in Computer Science and related fields. The site has a robust search engine that allows you to filter results by date, author.

• Searches a large number of academic papers.
• Results can be filtered by date, author, and topic.
• The website is easy to use.
• You can create an account and save your searches for future reference.

CiteseerX is free to use.

#15. The Lens – patents search 

The Lens or the Patent Lens is an online patent and scholarly literature search facility, provided by Cambia, an Australia-based non-profit organization.

• Searches for a large number of academic papers.

The price range can be free for non-profit use to $5,000 for commercial enterprise.

#16. Fatcat – wiki for bibliographic catalog 

Fatcat is an open bibliographic catalog of written works. The scope of works is somewhat flexible, with a focus on published research outputs like journal articles, pre-prints, and conference proceedings. Records are collaboratively editable, versioned, available in bulk form, and include URL-agnostic file-level metadata.

• Open source and collaborative
• You can be part of the community that is very focused on its mission
• The archival file-level metadata (verified digests and long-term copies) is a great feature.
• Could prove to be another rabbit hole
• People either love or hate the text-only interface

#17. Lexis Web – Legal database

Are you researching legal topics? You can turn to Lexis Web for any law-related questions you may have. The results are drawn from legal sites and can be filtered based on criteria such as news, blogs, government, and commercial. Additionally, users can filter results by jurisdiction, practice area, source and file format.

• Results are drawn from legal sites.
• Filters are available based on criteria such as news, blogs, government, and commercial.
• Users can filter results by jurisdiction, practice area, source and file format.
• Not all law-related questions will be answered by this search engine.
• Coverage is limited to legal sites only.

Lexis Web is free for up to three searches per day. After that, a subscription is required.

#18. Infotopia – part of the VLRC family

Infotopia touts itself as an “alternative to Google safe search.” Scholarly book results are curated by librarians, teachers, and other educational workers. Users can select from a range of topics such as art, health, and science and technology, and then see a list of resources pertaining to the topic. 

Consequently, if you aren’t able to find what you are looking for within Infotopia’s pages, you will probably find it on one of its many suggested websites.

#19. Virtual Learning Resources Center

Virtual Learning Resources Center (VLRC) is an academic search engine that features thousands of academic sites chosen by educators and librarians worldwide. Using an index generated from a research portal, university, and library internet subject guides, students and instructors can find current, authoritative information for school.

• Thousands of academic information websites indexed by it. You will also be able to get more refined results with custom Google search, which will speed up your research. 
• Many people consider VLRC as one of the best free search engines to start looking for research material. 
• TeachThought rated the Virtual LRC #3 in it’s list of 100 Search Engines For Academic Research
• More relevant to education 
• More relevant to students

Powered by Google Custom Search Engine (CSE), Jurn is a free online search engine for accessing and downloading free full-text scholarly papers. It was created by David Haden in a public open beta version in February 2009, initially for locating open access electronic journal articles in the arts and humanities.

After the indexing process was completed, a website containing additional public directories of web links to indexed publications was introduced in mid-2009. The Jurn search service and directory has been regularly modified and cleaned since then.

• A great resource for finding academic papers that are behind paywalls.
• The content is updated regularly.uren

Jurn is free to use.

#21. WorldWideScience

The Office of Scientific and Technical Information—a branch of the Office of Science within the U.S. Department of Energy—hosts the portal WorldWideScience , which has dubbed itself “The Global Science Gateway.”

Over 70 countries’ databases are used on the website. When a user enters a query, it contacts databases from all across the world and shows results in both English and translated journals and academic resources.

• Results can be filtered by language and type of resource
• Interface is easy to use
• Contains both academic journal articles and translated academic resources 
• The website can be difficult to navigate.

WorldWideScience is free to use.

#22. Google Books

A user can browse thousands of books on Google Books, from popular titles to old titles, to find pages that include their search terms. You can look through pages, read online reviews, and find out where to buy a hard copy once you find the book you are interested in.

#23. DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)

DOAJ is a free search engine for scientific and scholarly materials. It is a searchable database with over 8,000 peer-reviewed research papers organized by subject. It’s one of the most comprehensive libraries of scientific and scholarly resources, with over 8,000 journals available on a variety of themes.

#24. Baidu Scholar

Baidu Xueshu (Academic) is the Chinese version for Google Scholar. IDU Scholar indexes academic papers from a variety of disciplines in both Chinese and English.

• Articles are available in full text PDF.
• Covers a variety of academic disciplines.
• No abstracts are available for most articles, but summaries are provided for some.
• A great portal that takes you to different specialized research platform
• You need to be able to read Chinese to use the site
• Since 2021 there is a rise of focus on China and the Chinese Communist Party

Baidu Scholar is free to use.

#25. PubMed Central

PubMed is a free search engine that provides references and abstracts for medical, life sciences, and biomedical topics.

If you’re studying anything related to healthcare or science, this site is perfect. PublicMed Central is operated by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. It contains more than 3 million full-text journal articles. 

It’s similar to PubMed Health, which focuses on health-related research and includes abstracts and citations to over 26 million articles.

#26. MEDLINE®

MEDLINE® is a paid subscription database for life sciences and biomedicine that includes more than 28 million citations to journal articles. For finding reliable, carefully chosen health information, Medline Plus provides a powerful search tool and even a dictionary.

• A great database for life sciences and biomedicine.
• Contains more than 28 million references to journal articles.
• References can be filtered by date, type of document, and language.
• The database is expensive to access.
• Some people find it difficult to navigate and find what they are looking for.

MEDLINE is not free to use ( pricing information ).

Defunct Academic Search Engines 

#27. microsoft academic  .

Microsoft Academic

Microsoft Academic Search seemed to be a failure from the beginning. It ended in 2012, then re-launched in 2016 as Microsoft Academic. It provides the researcher with the opportunity to search academic publications,

Microsoft Academic used to be the second-largest academic search engine after Google Scholar. Microsoft Academic provides a wealth of data for free, but Microsoft has announced that it will shut Microsoft Academic down in by 2022. 

#28. Scizzle

Designed to help researchers stay on top of the literature by setting up email alerts, based on key terms, for newspapers.

Unfortunately, academic search engines come and go. These are two that are no longer available.

Final Thoughts

There are many academic search engines that can help researchers and scholars find the information they need. This list provides a variety of options, starting with more familiar engines and moving on to less well-known ones. 

Keeping an open mind and exploring different sources is essential for conducting effective online research. With so much information at our fingertips, it’s important to make sure we’re using the best tools available to us.

Tell us in the comment below which academic search engine have you not heard of? Which database do you think we should add? What database do your professional societies use? What are the most useful academic websites for research in your opinion?

There is more.

Check out our other articles on the Best Academic Tools Series for Research below.

• Learn how to get more done with these Academic Writing Tools  
• Learn how to proofread your work with these Proofreading Tools
• Learn how to broaden your research landscape with these Academic Search Engines
• Learn how to manage multiple research projects with these Project Management Tools
• Learn how to run effective survey research with these Survey Tools for Research
• Learn how get more insights from important conversations and interviews with Transcription Tools
• Learn how to manage the ever-growing list of references with these Reference Management Software
• Learn how to double your productivity with literature reviews with these AI-Based Summary Generators
• Learn how to build and develop your audience with these Academic Social Network Sites
• Learn how to make sure your content is original and trustworthy with these Plagiarism Checkers
• Learn how to talk about your work effectively with these Science Communication Tools

10 thoughts on “28 Best Academic Search Engines That make your research easier”

Thank you so much Joannah..I have found this information useful to me as librarian in an academic library

You are welcome! We are happy to hear that!

Thank You Team, for providing a comprehensive list of academic search engines that can help make research easier for students and scholars. The variety of search engines included offers a range of options for finding scholarly articles, journals, and other academic resources. The article also provides a brief summary of each search engine’s features, which helps in determining which one is the best fit for a specific research topic. Overall, this article is a valuable resource for anyone looking for a quick and easy way to access a wealth of academic information.

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us. We are delighted to hear that you found our list of academic search engines helpful in making research easier for students and scholars. We understand the importance of having a variety of options when it comes to finding scholarly articles, journals, and other academic resources, and we strive to provide a comprehensive list of resources to meet those needs.

We are glad that you found the brief summary of each search engine’s features helpful in determining which one is the best fit for a specific research topic. Our goal is to make it easy for our readers to access valuable academic information and we’re glad that we were able to achieve that for you.

We appreciate your support and thank you for your kind words. We will continue to provide valuable resources for students and researchers in the future. Please let us know if you have any further questions or suggestions.

No more questions Thank You

I cannot thank you enough!!! thanks alot 🙂

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Hi Joannah! Here’s another one you may want to add! Expontum ( https://www.expontum.com/ ) – Helps researchers quickly find knowledge gaps and identify what research projects have been completed before. Thanks!

Expontum – Helps researchers quickly find knowledge gaps and identify what research projects have been completed before. Expontum is free, open access, and available to all globally with no paid versions of the site. Automated processes scan research article information 24/7 so this website is constantly updating. By looking at over 35 million research publications (240 million by the end of 2023), the site has 146 million tagged research subjects and 122 million tagged research attributes. Learn more about methodology and sources on the Expontum About Page ( https://www.expontum.com/about.php )

Hey Ryan, I clicked and checked your site and thought it was very relevant to our reader. Thank you for sharing. And, we will be reviewing your site soon.

Sounds good! Thanks, Joannah!

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In some cases, the full-text may be available.  If not, please use either E-journals* or Interlibrary Services.

*Link on Libraries homepage and is used to see if the Libraries has an online subscription.

• Analytical Sciences Digital Library The Analytical Sciences Digital Library, ASDL, collects, catalogs, links and publishes peer reviewed web-based discovery materials pertinent to innovations in curricular development and supporting technical resources in the analytical sciences.
• arXiv Open access to 909,799 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics.
• BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine BASE is a search engine especially for academic open access web resources.
• BioOne BioOne is a global, not-for-profit collaboration bringing together scientific societies, publishers, and libraries to provide access to critical, peer-reviewed research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences.
• Department of Energy: Office of Scientific and Technical Information The Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information provides free public access to over 301,000 full-text documents and bibliographic citations of Department of Energy (DOE) research report literature. Documents are primarily from 1991 forward and were produced by DOE, the DOE contractor community, and/or DOE grantees. Legacy documents are added as they become available in electronic format.
• IngentaConnect ingentaconnect offers one of the most comprehensive collections of academic and professional research articles online - some 4.5 million articles from 13,500 publications.
• National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the public good.
• OpenSIGLE The Grey Literature Network Service was founded in 1992. The goal of GreyNet is to facilitate dialog, research, and communication between persons and organisations in the field of grey literature. GreyNet further seeks to identify and distribute information on and about grey literature in networked environments. Its main activities include the International Conference Series on Grey Literature, the creation and maintenance of web-based resources, a moderated Listserv and combined Distribution List, The Grey Journal (TGJ), and curriculum development. Grey Literature is a field in library and Information science that deals with the production, distribution, and access to multiple document types produced on all levels of government, academics, business, and organization in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body.
• PLOS (Public Library of Science) PLOS is a nonprofit, Open Access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.
• PubMed Central PMC is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
• SciELO Open Access e-journals.
• Science.gov Science.gov searches over 55 databases and over 2100 selected websites from 13 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results. Science.gov is governed by the interagency Science.gov Alliance.
• Science Research ScienceResearch.com is a free, publicly available deep web search engine that uses advanced "federated search technology" to return high quality results by submitting your search query - in real-time - to other well respected search engines then collating, ranking and dropping duplicates of the results.
• Sensei Scholar Q-Sensei pools and processes a vast amount of information from the Internet and makes it better accessible to its users with its patented Search and Presentation engine. Search results are displayed clearly and comprehensively while cross references with rich content enable the user to gain more insight and understand search results in a larger context.
• WorldWideScience WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals.
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15 Educational Search Engines College Students Should Know About

By Anna Heinrich on 03/22/2017

After hours spent scrolling through Google and pulling up endless clickbait results, you’re frustrated with the internet. You have a paper to write, homework to do and things to learn—and this degree isn’t going to earn itself. You know you won’t get away with citing Wikipedia or Buzzfeed in your research paper. Even the big news engines aren’t scholarly enough. You need reputable sources for your homework, and you need them now.

With so many resources online, it’s hard to narrow it down and find ones that are not only reliable and useful, but also free for students. We’ve saved you the time and picked out our 15 best free search engines for research.

15 Scholarly search engines every student should bookmark

1. google scholar.

Google Scholar  was created as a tool to congregate scholarly literature on the web. From one place, students have the ability to hunt for peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

2. Google Books

Google Books  allows web users to browse an index of thousands of books, from popular titles to old, to find pages that include your search terms. Once you find the book you are looking for, you can look through pages, find online reviews and learn where you can get a hard copy.

3. Microsoft Academic

Operated by the company that brings you Word, PowerPoint and Excel,  Microsoft Academic  is a reliable, comprehensive research tool. The search engine pulls content from over 120 million publications, including scientific papers, conferences and journals. You can search directly by topic, or you can search by an extensive list of fields of study. For example, if you’re interested in computer science, you can filter through topics such as artificial intelligence, computer security, data science, programming languages and more.

4. WorldWideScience

WorldWideScience , which refers to itself as “The Global Science Gateway,” is operated by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information—a branch of the Office of Science within the U.S. Department of Energy. The site utilizes databases from over 70 countries. When users type a query, it hits databases from all over the world and will display both English and translated results from related journals and academic resources.

5. Science.gov

Science.gov  is operated and maintained by the Office of Science and Technical Information, the same department that collaborates on WorldWideScience.org. This search engine pulls from over 60 databases, over 2,200 websites and 200 million pages of journals, documents and scientific data. Search results can be filtered by author, date, topic and format (text or multimedia).

6. Wolfram Alpha

A self-described “computational knowledge engine,”  Wolfram Alpha  does not so much provide search results as it does search answers. Simply type in a topic or question you may be interested in, such as, “What is the function of the pancreas?” and the answer will show up without making you scroll through pages of results. This is especially handy for those in need of math help.

With its minimalist design,  Refseek  doesn’t look like much. However, the engine pulls from over one billion web pages, encyclopedias, journals and books. It is similar to Google in its functionality, except that it focuses more on scientific and academic results—meaning more results will come from .edu or .org sites, as well as online encyclopedias. It also has an option to search documents directly—providing easy access to PDFs of academic papers.

8. Educational Resources Information Center

Populated by the U.S. Department of Education, the  Educational Resources Information Center  (ERIC) is a great tool for academic research with more than 1.3 million bibliographic records of articles and online materials. ERIC provides access to an extensive body of education-related literature including journal articles, books, research syntheses, conference papers, technical reports, policy papers and more. With more than eight million searches each month, it’s no wonder why this search engine is a great web source for education.

9. Virtual Learning Resources Center

The  Virtual Learning Resources Center  (VLRC) is an online index hosting thousands of scholarly websites, all of which are selected by teachers and librarians from around the globe. The site provides students and teachers with current, valid information for school and university academic projects using an index gathered from research portals, universities and library internet subject guides recommended by teachers and librarians.

iSeek  is a great search engine for students, teachers and administrators alike. Simply ask a question or enter search topics or tools, and iSeek will pull from scholastic sources to find exactly what you are looking for. The search engine is safe, intelligent and timesaving—and it draws from trusted resources from universities, government and established non-commercial sites.

11. ResearchGate

ResearchGate  is a unique social networking site for scientists and researchers. Over 11 million researchers submit their work, which totals more than 100 million publications, on the site for anyone to access. You can search by publication, data and author, or you can even ask the researchers questions. Though it’s not a search engine that pulls from external sources, ResearchGate’s own collection of publications provides a hearty selection for any inquisitive scholar.

The  Bielefeld Academic Search Engine  (BASE) prides itself as being “one of the world’s most voluminous search engines especially for academic web resources.” Utilizing 4,000 sources, the site contains results from over 100 million documents. The advanced search option allows users to narrow their research—so whether you’re looking for a book, review, lecture, video or thesis, BASE can provide the specific format you need.

13. Infotopia

Infotopia  describes itself as a “Google-alternative safe search engine.” The academic search engine pulls from results that have been curated by librarians, teachers and other educational workers. A unique search feature allows users to select a category, which ranges from art to health to science and technology, and then see a list of internal and external resources pertaining to the topic. So if you don’t find what you’re looking for within the pages of Infotopia, you will probably find it in one of its many suggested sites.

14. PubMed Central

This site is perfect for those studying anything related to healthcare or science.  PubMed Central  is operated by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The database contains more than 3 million full-text journal articles. It’s similar to  PubMed Health , which is specifically for health-related research and studies, and includes citations and abstracts to more than 26 million articles.

15. Lexis Web

Researching legal topics?  Lexis Web  is your go-to for any law-related inquiries you may have. The results are drawn from legal sites, which can be filtered by criteria such as news, blog, government and commercial. Users can also filter results by jurisdiction, practice area, source and file format.

Start searching

Pulling up an Internet search might be second nature to you by now. But a little forethought into where you begin your hunt can make your life much easier. Save yourself the time wading through basic Google search results and utilize some of these tools to ensure your results will be up to par with academic standards.

As a student at Rasmussen University, you’ll have access to library resources and librarians to help you with your research or writing for any of our classes. Visit our student experience page to learn more about the support you’ll have at Rasmussen University.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was originally published in December 2009. It has since been updated to include information relevant to 2017.

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About the author

Anna Heinrich

Anna is a Copywriter at Collegis Education who researches and writes student-focused content on behalf of Rasmussen University. She believes the power of the written word can help educate and assist students on their way to a rewarding education.

Posted in Student Success

• college student tips
• college student resources
• college life

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Top 10 Free Search Engines for Scientific and Academic Research

Search engines are vital tools that ease the process of research for scientific and research professors, lecturers and students. It enables anyone searching for scientific information to precisely find and pick up the information they need including peer-reviewed articles, genuine information, author home pages, and university web sites.

There are many search engines that can shorten the time required for data collection and we are taking a look at the best free search engines you can get benefit from in the following list:

1- Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a search engine that allows the researcher to find out articles, technical reports, theses, citations, books and other documents including selected Web pages. It is a free tool, and is considered the world's largest academic search engine in January 2018. Many researchers find Google scholar as powerful as many subscription-based search engines when looking for citation of articles.

2- Google Books

Google Books is a free tool that enables the researcher to search for full texts inside the books and magazines scanned in Google database. It was firstly developed under the name Google Print in 2004. By the end of 2019, the number of scanned books reached over 40 million titles.

3- Microsoft Academic

Microsoft Academic is a free tool developed by Microsoft. It was firstly named Microsoft Academic Search and ended in 2012, then re-launched in 2016 as Microsoft Academic. It provides the researcher with the opportunity to search academic publications, literature and to perform citation analysis. It covers over 220 million publications including about 88 million journal articles. Bibliometricians suggest Microsoft Academic as a strong competitor to Google Scholar.

PubMed is a free search engine for references and abstracts on medical, life sciences, and biomedical topics. Starting from 1971, its online access was restricted to the use of academic institutions as University libraries. Since 1997, it was made available to online public use. At the beginning of 2020, PubMed has over 30 million citations and abstracts.

Refseek is an academic search engine that is considered simpler than Google as it excludes information overload. It focuses on scientific and academic topics for scientists and students. It aims mainly at making academic information easily accessible to everyone. It indexes more than 5 billion documents including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers. It was launched in 2009.

6- CiteSeerX

CiteSeerX  is a public search engine for scientific and academic topics specially computer and information science. It was created in 1997 under the name of CiteSeer and became public in 1998. CiteSeerX replaced CiteSeer, and it was released in 2008. It has many features as Autonomous citation indexing (ACI), Citation statistics, Author disambiguation, Automatic metadata extraction, Full-text indexing, and many more features.

7- Semantic Scholar

Semantic Scholar was created by a team at the Allen Institute for AI, and was released at the end of 2015 as a search engine for academic publications. In comparison to Google Scholar and PubMed, Semantic Scholar is designed to spot the light on the most important papers, and to identify the connections between them. By 2019, Semantic Scholar indexed more than 180 million papers which include all fields of science.

8- ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a site that was founded in 2008. It is currently dominated by users searching and providing information on biology and medicine. It also includes computer science, engineering and psychology. This search engine currently provides results from over 135 million publication pages. It also provides an iOS mobile app which has many features as connecting with people in your field and messaging them directly, and Keeping track of your notifications, reads, and citations of your work.

9- ScienceOpen

ScienceOpen was founded in 2013, and has more than 63 million publications. It offers many free tools such as multi-dimensional search by 18 filters, exporting search results in EndNote, BibTex, and Reference Manager (RIS) formats (Up to 200 citations exported at a time), track usage, citations, and altmetrics of your publications on ScienceOpen, follow researchers for updates on their activities, and many more powerful features.

10- Europe PMC

Europe PMC is an open sience platform that has 37 million abstracts, 6.1 million full text articles, and more than 23500 books and documents. It gives you the ability to claim your articles by linking them to your ORCID.

The above mentioned academic search engines are among the most reputable and free search engines for scientific researchers. They provide information on the major topics of science including medicine, biology, computer science and other areas of academic research. Thanks a million for the efforts of the developers that are responsible for research and development of useful tools that help researchers and scientists to acquire the information they need to finish their researches for the greater good for the humanity.

Author: Mohamed Eldesouki

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