28 Best Academic Search Engines That make your research easier

Academic Search Engines

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. 

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

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.

#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. 

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. 

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.

#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 is free to use.

#5. BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)

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.

You might also like:

#7. Science.gov

#8. semantic scholar, #9. refseek.

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.

#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.

#11. DataONE Search (formerly CiteULike) 

#12. dataelixir , #13. lazyscholar – browser extension, #14. citeseerx – digital library from penstate, #15. the lens – patents search , #16. fatcat – wiki for bibliographic catalog , #17. lexis web – legal database, #18. infotopia – part of the vlrc family, #19. virtual learning resources center, #21. worldwidescience.

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.

#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)

#24. baidu scholar, #25. pubmed central, #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.

Defunct Academic Search Engines 

#27. microsoft academic  .

Microsoft Academic

#28. Scizzle

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. 

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.

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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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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Reference management. Clean and simple.

The top list of academic research databases

best research databases

2. Web of Science

5. ieee xplore, 6. sciencedirect, 7. directory of open access journals (doaj), get the most out of your academic research database, frequently asked questions about academic research databases, related articles.

Whether you are writing a thesis , dissertation, or research paper it is a key task to survey prior literature and research findings. More likely than not, you will be looking for trusted resources, most likely peer-reviewed research articles.

Academic research databases make it easy to locate the literature you are looking for. We have compiled the top list of trusted academic resources to help you get started with your research:

Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Besides searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator .

  • Coverage: 90.6 million core records
  • References: N/A
  • Discipline: Multidisciplinary
  • Access options: Limited free preview, full access by institutional subscription only
  • Provider: Elsevier

Search interface of Scopus

Web of Science also known as Web of Knowledge is the second big bibliographic database. Usually, academic institutions provide either access to Web of Science or Scopus on their campus network for free.

  • Coverage: approx. 100 million items
  • References: 1.4 billion
  • Access options: institutional subscription only
  • Provider: Clarivate (formerly Thomson Reuters)

Web of Science landing page

PubMed is the number one resource for anyone looking for literature in medicine or biological sciences. PubMed stores abstracts and bibliographic details of more than 30 million papers and provides full text links to the publisher sites or links to the free PDF on PubMed Central (PMC) .

  • Coverage: approx. 35 million items
  • Discipline: Medicine and Biological Sciences
  • Access options: free
  • Provider: NIH

Search interface of PubMed

For education sciences, ERIC is the number one destination. ERIC stands for Education Resources Information Center, and is a database that specifically hosts education-related literature.

  • Coverage: approx. 1.6 million items
  • Discipline: Education
  • Provider: U.S. Department of Education

Search interface of ERIC academic database

IEEE Xplore is the leading academic database in the field of engineering and computer science. It's not only journal articles, but also conference papers, standards and books that can be search for.

  • Coverage: approx. 6 million items
  • Discipline: Engineering
  • Provider: IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

Search interface of IEEE Xplore

ScienceDirect is the gateway to the millions of academic articles published by Elsevier, 1.4 million of which are open access. Journals and books can be searched via a single interface.

  • Coverage: approx. 19.5 million items

Search interface of ScienceDirect

The DOAJ is an open-access academic database that can be accessed and searched for free.

  • Coverage: over 8 million records
  • Provider: DOAJ

Search interface of DOAJ database

JSTOR is another great resource to find research papers. Any article published before 1924 in the United States is available for free and JSTOR also offers scholarships for independent researchers.

  • Coverage: more than 12 million items
  • Provider: ITHAKA

Search interface of JSTOR

Start using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with PubMed and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

best research papers available sites

Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Beside searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator .

PubMed is the number one resource for anyone looking for literature in medicine or biological sciences. PubMed stores abstracts and bibliographic details of more than 30 million papers and provides full text links to the publisher sites or links to the free PDF on PubMed Central (PMC)

best research papers available sites

Detail of a painting depicting the landscape of New Mexico with mountains in the distance

Explore millions of high-quality primary sources and images from around the world, including artworks, maps, photographs, and more.

Explore migration issues through a variety of media types

  • Part of The Streets are Talking: Public Forms of Creative Expression from Around the World
  • Part of The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter 2020)
  • Part of Cato Institute (Aug. 3, 2021)
  • Part of University of California Press
  • Part of Open: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture
  • Part of Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
  • Part of R Street Institute (Nov. 1, 2020)
  • Part of Leuven University Press
  • Part of UN Secretary-General Papers: Ban Ki-moon (2007-2016)
  • Part of Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 12, No. 4 (August 2018)
  • Part of Leveraging Lives: Serbia and Illegal Tunisian Migration to Europe, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Mar. 1, 2023)
  • Part of UCL Press

Harness the power of visual materials—explore more than 3 million images now on JSTOR.

Enhance your scholarly research with underground newspapers, magazines, and journals.

Explore collections in the arts, sciences, and literature from the world’s leading museums, archives, and scholars.

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10 Free Research and Journal Databases

10 Free Research and Journal Databases

  • 3-minute read
  • 6th April 2019

Finding good research can be tough, especially when so much of it is locked behind paywalls . But there are free resources out there if you know where to look. So to help out, we’ve compiled a list of ten free academic search engines and databases that you should check out.

1. Google Scholar

Even if you’ve not used Google Scholar before, you’ll know Google. And, thus, you can probably guess that Google Scholar is a search engine dedicated to academic work. Not everything listed on Google Scholar will be freely available in full. But it is a good place to start if you’re looking for a specific paper, and many papers can be downloaded for free.

CORE is an open research aggregator. This means it works as a search engine for open access research published by organizations from around the world, all of which is available for free. It is also the world’s largest open access aggregator , so it is a very useful resource for researchers!

Core logo.

3. Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE)

Another dedicated academic search engine, BASE offers access to more than 140 million documents from more than 6,000 sources. Around 60% of these documents are open access, and you can filter results to see only research that is available for free online.

4. Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a database that lists around 12,000 open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social science, and the humanities.

PubMed is a search engine maintained by the NCBI, part of the United States National Library of Medicine. It provides access to more than 29 million citations of biomedical research from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. The NCBI runs a similar search engine for research in the chemical sciences called PubChem , too, which is also free to use.

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6. E-Theses Online Service (EThOS)

Run by the British Library, EThOS is a database of over 500,000 doctoral theses. More than half of these are available for free, either directly via EThOS or via a link to a university website.

7. Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

SSRN is a database for research from the social sciences and humanities, including 846,589 research papers from 426,107 researchers across 30 disciplines. Most of these are available for free, although you may need to sign up as a member (also free) to access some services.

8. WorldWideScience

WorldWideScience is a global academic search engine, providing access to national and international scientific databases from across the globe. One interesting feature is that it offers automatic translation, so users can have search results translated into their preferred language.

WorldWideScience logo.

9. Semantic Scholar

Semantic Scholar is an “intelligent” academic search engine. It uses machine learning to prioritize the most important research, which can make it easier to find relevant literature. Or, in Semantic Scholar’s own words, it uses influential citations, images, and key phrases to “cut through the clutter.”

10. Public Library of Science (PLOS)

PLOS is an open-access research organization that publishes several journals. But as well as publishing its own research, PLOS is a dedicated advocate for open-access learning. So if you appreciate the search engines and databases we’ve listed here, check out the rest of the PLOS site to find out more about their campaign to enable access to knowledge.

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arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Materials on this site are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.

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Resources for Academic Research: 12 Best Websites & Tools

Learn about the best 12 websites, tools, and resources for academic research to streamline and improve your research. Find out more now!

It is best to use scholarly or professional resources that are reliable, accurate, and valid for academic coursework and resources for academic research project assignments.

These are typically books and articles that have been reviewed before publication, but they can also be media and websites from reputable organizations and institutions.

When you do a research project, write a paper, or start a blog, you would then read articles to see what other people have done and then build on their work.

What are Resources for Academic Research?

Resources for academic research are the tools, materials, and information sources that scholars, students, and researchers use to conduct thorough and accurate research on a given topic.

Academic journals, books, online databases, primary and secondary sources, and research tools such as citation generators, reference managers, and statistical analysis software are examples of these resources .

Access to reliable and diverse resources is essential for producing high-quality academic work that is credible, informative, and current.

12 Best Websites, Tools & Resources for Academic Research

What sources will lead you to trustworthy resources for academic research? When you need to find sources, use these academic resources instead of scrolling through pages of search results.

  • Google Scholar

Google Scholar offers a wide range of scholarly literature, including articles, theses, books, and conference papers, making it a great resource for academic study.

Google Scholar allows researchers to search for information on a topic, find relevant material for their literature review, track citations of their work, remain up-to-date on new research in their field, and evaluate their work using metrics like the h-index and i10-index.

It’s a comprehensive, user-friendly academic research resource with powerful search capabilities, email alerts, and Google integration. This important website helps researchers find, access, and manage research data.

Features: 

  • Keyword, author, or title search box for scholarly literature.
  • Tracking your work’s citations.
  • Advanced search filters by publication date, author, or journal.
  • Full-text articles and papers for convenient reference.
  • Email alerts for keywords or topics to remain current on research in your profession.
  • Work impact metrics like the h-index and i10-index.
  • Google Books and Google Drive integration for saving and organizing research resources.

JSTOR is an online library with academic journals, books, and primary sources from many fields. It was started in 1995 as a non-profit organization by JSTOR Inc. and a number of academic institutions.

More than 12 million academic articles and books from more than 2,000 publishers are in JSTOR’s online library. Content on JSTOR comes from many different fields, such as the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

Individuals and institutions can subscribe to JSTOR’s digital library, and researchers, students, and scholars worldwide use it as a reliable and complete resource for academic research.

  • JSTOR offers scholarly journals, books, and primary materials.
  • JSTOR material spans humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
  • JSTOR’s stored content, including historical records, gives academics a broad perspective.
  • Users can search the platform’s huge database for keywords, authors, titles, and more.
  • PDFs of JSTOR articles can be downloaded.
  • Sharing, citation, and exporting options help scholars collaborate on the platform.
  • JSTOR’s pricing makes it’s content affordable for all sizes and budgets.

ProQuest is a global information content and technology company that gives access to research databases, electronic books, and digital archives. Eugene B. Power started it in 1938 as University Microfilms to store and distribute dissertations and theses on microfilm.

Today, ProQuest gives you access to a wide range of content, such as academic journals, newspapers, dissertations, and primary sources. The databases on ProQuest cover a wide range of subjects, including the social sciences, the humanities, and the natural sciences.

Researchers, students, and scholars worldwide use ProQuest because it is a reliable, all-inclusive resource for academic research.

Features : 

  • Offers access to research databases, e-books, and digital archives in a wide range of fields.
  • There are a lot of academic journals, newspapers, dissertations, and primary sources in this collection.
  • Included are the social sciences, the humanities, and the natural sciences.
  • Users can search by author, title, keyword, subject, and other criteria.
  • Many of its databases let you read articles and other materials in full text.
  • Includes tools for saving research, organizing it, and sharing it with others.
  • Offers different pricing options so that people and organizations of all sizes and budgets can use it.
  • Offers easy access to ProQuest’s services through mobile apps and the web so that they can be used from anywhere.
  • Users can get a lot of help with customer service and training.
  • ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a social networking site for academics and researchers to cooperate. In 2008, a group of scientists founded it to allow researchers to share their work, communicate, and network.

One of the largest research communities online, ResearchGate has over 17 million users. The platform lets scholars create profiles, share publications, ask and answer questions, and network with like-minded researchers.

A citation tracker and reputation score help scholars manage their research activity on ResearchGate.

  • A social network for scientists and researchers.
  • Enables scholars to create profiles, share work, and network.
  • Researcher cooperation and discussion platform.
  • A citation tracker, online reputation score , and analytics assist scholars in managing their research.
  • Job board and career resource for researchers.
  • Allows field researchers to ask and answer questions.
  • Offers a news feed on cutting-edge research.
  • Provides scholars with peer assessment and feedback.
  • Allows researchers to advertise their work and gain academic recognition.
  • Provides free and premium memberships.

Zotero, a free, open-source reference manager, helps scholars organize and credit their sources. The George Mason University Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media was founded in 2006.

Zotero lets users organize and search papers, books, web pages, and other study materials. It connects with various online browsers to gather and save research sources when surfing.

Researchers may easily format their citations and bibliographies in their discipline’s style with Zotero’s several citation formats. As a handy and effective tool for managing research resources, researchers, students, and scholars worldwide use it.

  • A free, open-source reference manager.
  • Organizes, stores, and cites research sources.
  • Organizes and stores research items in a searchable database.
  • It connects with various online browsers to gather and save research sources when surfing.
  • Offers a variety of citation styles for producing citations and bibliographies.
  • Enables people to share their research.
  • Provides note-taking, labeling, and research source highlighting features.
  • Automatically refreshes and syncs devices for easy research access.
  • Provides many plugins and add-ons to increase functionality.
  • Includes excellent documentation and a helpful user community.

Mendeley, a free reference management and academic, social network, lets researchers organize and share their articles and resources. It was started in 2008 by academicians and software developers and acquired by Elsevier in 2013.

Mendeley lets users create a searchable database of research papers, books, and other resources, including citation management, collaboration, and discovery capabilities. It offers groups, profiles, and suggestions to assist the researcher’s network.

Mendeley is a convenient and effective research management tool used by academics, students, and intellectuals worldwide.

  • Free academic networking and reference management.
  • Helps scholars organize and share papers and resources.
  • Provides a searchable database of research papers, books, etc.
  • Citation, collaboration, and discovery tools.
  • Helps researchers network with groups, profiles, and recommendations.
  • Annotates, highlights, and organizes research.
  • Formats citations and bibliographies in several fields.
  • Plugins and add-ons for major word processing and research applications.
  • Automatic updates and device syncing make research materials accessible anywhere.
  • Has a strong user community and substantial documentation.

Grammarly is a real-time writing tool that checks spelling, punctuation, and style. It was created in 2009 by linguists and software engineers and is now one of the most popular writing tools.

Grammarly is available as a browser extension, a desktop program for Windows and macOS, and a web app. It comes in free and premium versions, with the premium version adding genre-specific writing style advice, plagiarism detection, and readability scoring.

Grammarly improves writing for millions of writers, students, and professionals worldwide.

  • Real-time grammar and spelling checker for writers.
  • Helps writers improve style and tone.
  • Software engineers and linguists created it.
  • Use a web app, browser extension, or desktop software.
  • Free and paid versions are available.
  • The premium edition includes genre-specific writing style suggestions, plagiarism detection, and a readability score.
  • Helps writers improve their writing quality and clarity.
  • Available in English and others.
  • Compatible with Google Documents, Microsoft Word, and others.
  • Provides thorough grammar and writing instructions in an easy-to-use interface.
  • Helps non-native English speakers improve their writing.
  • Microsoft Academic

Microsoft Research created the free public search engine Microsoft Academic. It offers scientific, technological, engineering, mathematical, social science, and humanities research papers, journals, conference proceedings, and other scholarly publications.

Microsoft Academic leverages advanced natural language processing and machine learning to recognize author, publication, and research domain relationships, making it easier for scholars to find relevant material and track field changes. Citation analysis, research network visualization, and author profile management are also available.

  • A free public search engine built by Microsoft Research.
  • Accesses academic journals, conference proceedings, research papers, and other scholarly publications.
  • Understands authors, publications, and research fields using advanced natural language processing and machine learning.
  • Helps researchers find relevant literature and follow industry trends.
  • Citation analysis, visualization of research networks, and author profile creation and management are available.
  • Has powerful filters and semantic search in a user-friendly interface.
  • Citation counts, trends, and co-authorship networks are provided.
  • Enables users to set personalized research alerts.
  • APIs enable developers to access data and functionality.
  • Zotero and Mendeley integration supported.

Evernote lets users capture, organize, and share notes and information across devices. It helps users recall everything from personal notes and to-do lists to business documents and research notes.

Evernote lets users make and save notes in text, photos, audio, and site clippings. Tagging, search, and device synchronization make it easy for users to find and retrieve their notes anytime, anywhere.

The premium edition of Evernote includes PDF annotation, presentation mode, and team collaboration.

  • Note-taking app for multiple platforms.
  • Enables users to take, organize, and share notes across devices.
  • Helps users recall anything from personal notes and to-do lists to research and business paperwork.
  • Enables users to make and save notes in numerous formats, including text, photos, audio, and site clippings.
  • Allows users to find and retrieve their notes anytime, anywhere, with labeling, search, and device syncing.
  • Has configurable notebooks and notes and a simple interface.
  • Offers note formatting, annotation, and editing features.
  • Supports Google Drive, Slack, and other productivity apps.
  • Provides a free version with limited functionality and a paid version with PDF annotation, presentation mode, and team collaboration.
  • Search notes, journals, and tags with a sophisticated search function.
  • To keep organized, lets users set reminders and make to-do lists.

The US National Library of Medicine (NLM) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) maintains PubMed, a free biomedical literature and research article database (NIH). It comprises over 32 million citations and abstracts of papers from more than 8,000 biomedical journals and books, dissertations, and other health and medicine-related resources.

PubMed covers a wide range of medical issues, including clinical research, genetics, nursing, and pharmacology. Medical researchers, students, and professionals can use it to find the newest medical research.

  • Free biomedical research article database.
  • Managed by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the NIH (NIH)
  • 32 million citations and abstracts from over 8,000 biomedical journals.
  • Clinical research, genetics, nursing, pharmacology, and more.
  • Obtains full-text articles from PubMed Central (PMC)
  • Includes Boolean operators, search fields, and filters.
  • Accesses MeSH, a fully controlled vocabulary for indexing articles.
  • Saves and exports search results and send email alerts for new publications matching search criteria.
  • Has a simple interface and search tools.
  • Links to important publications, citations, and other resources.
  • PubMed has a smartphone app.
  • QuestionPro Insight Hub

QuestionPro Insight Hub connects businesses and organizations to millions of consumers and expert panelists globally for market research. The platform allows users to build surveys, run polls, conduct focus groups, and collect data from social media, email, mobile devices, and websites. Advanced analytics and reporting options enable users to evaluate data and understand customer behavior, preferences, and opinions.

Businesses may use QuestionPro Insight Hub to acquire real-time feedback from their target audience, optimize their products and services, and make informed business decisions based on consumer insights. The platform is appropriate for startups to enterprise-level enterprises in fields including healthcare, education, finance, and more.

  • Access to millions of professional and consumer panelists all over the world
  • Customizable surveys with different types of questions, themes, and templates
  • Advanced logic and branching options for surveys
  • Integration with many data collection sources, like social media, email, mobile devices, and websites
  • Text analytics and sentiment analysis are built in for free-form responses.
  • Real-time reporting and analytics with dashboards and charts that the user can change
  • Collaboration tools that let team members share surveys, results, and insights
  • Survey participants can get invitations and reminders by email that they can customize.
  • Tools for running moderated and unmoderated discussions in online focus groups
  • Polling tools to get quick feedback from customers and stakeholders and to get them involved
  • Targeting options that make it easier to reach specific groups and demographics
  • Compliance with GDPR and CCPA for privacy and security of data
  • API and the ability to connect to other business platforms and applications.
  • QuestionPro Live polls

QuestionPro Live Polls lets presenters communicate with their audience by running live polls during presentations, meetings, webinars, and other events that require real-time input. Presenters can modify QuestionPro Live Polls and obtain rapid audience reactions.

QuestionPro Live Polls include:

  • Different question kinds.
  • Configurable designs.
  • Real-time live polling results.
  • Multiple distribution choices.
  • Audience engagement tools.
  • Analytics and reporting.
  • Integration with other platforms.

The solution lets presenters generate multiple-choice, rating scales, and open-ended polls.

SMS, email, QR codes, and social media to distribute QuestionPro Live Polls. Presenters and guests can instantly see real-time polling results on the screen. Presenters can quickly poll their audience regardless of location or device.

QuestionPro Live Polls encourages audience participation with countdown timers, animations, and gamification. Presenters can learn about audience opinions, preferences, and habits using poll analytics and reporting.

QuestionPro Live Polls is great for audience engagement, real-time feedback, and interactive presentations and events.

Features:  

  • Multiple question types, including multiple-choice, rating scales, and open-ended questions
  • Poll designs that can be changed to fit the theme of the presentation or event
  • The results of the poll were shown on the screen right away.
  • Several ways to spread the word, like SMS, email, QR codes, and social media
  • Tools for getting people to pay attention, such as countdown timers, animations, and gamification elements
  • Analytics and reporting tools can help you determine what your audience thinks, likes, and does.
  • Integration with other platforms, like PowerPoint, Zoom, and other video conferencing tools
  • You can target your audience based on different demographic and psychographic factors to get more accurate feedback and insights.

LEARN ABOUT: Speaker evaluation form

In conclusion, the 12 best websites, tools, and resources for academic research offer students, scholars, and researchers a wealth of information and tools to help them in their quest for knowledge. Databases, search engines, citation generators, and collaboration tools are just a few of the features these resources offer.

Using these resources, researchers can improve their research and produce high-quality academic work. Researchers should keep up with the latest tools and technologies, as these can greatly improve their research and help their field advance.

QuestionPro’s Insight Hub and Livepolls are powerful data collection tools. These tools have various features, such as doing surveys, visualizing data, and polling in real-time, which can greatly improve the research process.

With the ability to collect data from a wide range of sources, researchers can gain valuable insights and come to conclusions that are based on facts. Combining these two tools can help researchers do high-quality research and make important contributions to their field. So get more help for your academic research with the help of QuestionPro.

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21 Legit Research Databases for Free Journal Articles in 2024

#scribendiinc

Written by  Scribendi

Has this ever happened to you? While looking for websites for research, you come across a research paper site that claims to connect academics to a peer-reviewed article database for free.

Intrigued, you search for keywords related to your topic, only to discover that you must pay a hefty subscription fee to access the service. After the umpteenth time being duped, you begin to wonder if there's even such a thing as free journal articles.

Subscription fees and paywalls are often the bane of students and academics, especially those at small institutions who don't provide access to many free article directories and repositories.

Whether you're working on an undergraduate paper, a PhD dissertation, or a medical research study, we want to help you find tools to locate and access the information you need to produce well-researched, compelling, and innovative work.

Below, we discuss why peer-reviewed articles are superior and list out the best free article databases to use in 2024.

Download Our Free Research Database Roundup PDF

Why peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles are more authoritative.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Determining what sources are reliable can be challenging. Peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles are the gold standard in academic research. Reputable academic journals have a rigorous peer-review process.

The peer review process provides accountability to the academic community, as well as to the content of the article. The peer review process involves qualified experts in a specific (often very specific) field performing a review of an article's methods and findings to determine things like quality and credibility.

Peer-reviewed articles can be found in peer-reviewed article databases and research databases, and if you know that a database of journals is reliable, that can offer reassurances about the reliability of a free article. Peer review is often double blind, meaning that the author removes all identifying information and, likewise, does not know the identity of the reviewers. This helps reviewers maintain objectivity and impartiality so as to judge an article based on its merit.

Where to Find Peer-Reviewed Articles

Peer-reviewed articles can be found in a variety of research databases. Below is a list of some of the major databases you can use to find peer-reviewed articles and other sources in disciplines spanning the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.

What Are Open Access Journals?

An open access (OA) journal is a journal whose content can be accessed without payment. This provides scholars, students, and researchers with free journal articles. OA journals use alternate methods of funding to cover publication costs so that articles can be published without having to pass those publication costs on to the reader.

Open Access Journals

Some of these funding models include standard funding methods like advertising, public funding, and author payment models, where the author pays a fee in order to publish in the journal. There are OA journals that have non-peer-reviewed academic content, as well as journals that focus on dissertations, theses, and papers from conferences, but the main focus of OA is peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles.

The internet has certainly made it easier to access research articles and other scholarly publications without needing access to a university library, and OA takes another step in that direction by removing financial barriers to academic content.

Choosing Wisely

Features of legitimate oa journals.

 There are things to look out for when trying to decide if a free publication journal is legitimate:

Mission statement —The mission statement for an OA journal should be available on their website.

Publication history —Is the journal well established? How long has it been available?

Editorial board —Who are the members of the editorial board, and what are their credentials?

Indexing —Can the journal be found in a reliable database?

Peer review —What is the peer review process? Does the journal allow enough time in the process for a reliable assessment of quality?

Impact factor —What is the average number of times the journal is cited over a two-year period?

Features of Illegitimate OA Journals

There are predatory publications that take advantage of the OA format, and they are something to be wary of. Here are some things to look out for:

Contact information —Is contact information provided? Can it be verified?

Turnaround —If the journal makes dubious claims about the amount of time from submission to publication, it is likely unreliable.

Editorial board —Much like determining legitimacy, looking at the editorial board and their credentials can help determine illegitimacy.

Indexing —Can the journal be found in any scholarly databases?

Peer review —Is there a statement about the peer review process? Does it fit what you know about peer review?

How to Find Scholarly Articles

Identify keywords.

Keywords are included in an article by the author. Keywords are an excellent way to find content relevant to your research topic or area of interest. In academic searches, much like you would on a search engine, you can use keywords to navigate through what is available to find exactly what you're looking for.

Authors provide keywords that will help you easily find their article when researching a related topic, often including general terms to accommodate broader searches, as well as some more specific terms for those with a narrower scope. Keywords can be used individually or in combination to refine your scholarly article search.

Narrow Down Results

Sometimes, search results can be overwhelming, and searching for free articles on a journal database is no exception, but there are multiple ways to narrow down your results. A good place to start is discipline.

What category does your topic fall into (psychology, architecture, machine learning, etc.)? You can also narrow down your search with a year range if you're looking for articles that are more recent.

A Boolean search can be incredibly helpful. This entails including terms like AND between two keywords in your search if you need both keywords to be in your results (or, if you are looking to exclude certain keywords, to exclude these words from the results).

Consider Different Avenues

If you're not having luck using keywords in your search for free articles, you may still be able to find what you're looking for by changing your tactics. Casting a wider net sometimes yields positive results, so it may be helpful to try searching by subject if keywords aren't getting you anywhere.

You can search for a specific publisher to see if they have OA publications in the academic journal database. And, if you know more precisely what you're looking for, you can search for the title of the article or the author's name.

Determining the Credibility of Scholarly Sources

Ensuring that sources are both credible and reliable is crucial to academic research. Use these strategies to help evaluate the usefulness of scholarly sources:

  • Peer Review : Look for articles that have undergone a rigorous peer-review process. Peer-reviewed articles are typically vetted by experts in the field, ensuring the accuracy of the research findings.
Tip: To determine whether an article has undergone rigorous peer review, review the journal's editorial policies, which are often available on the journal's website. Look for information about the peer-review process, including the criteria for selecting reviewers, the process for handling conflicts of interest, and any transparency measures in place.
  • Publisher Reputation : Consider the reputation of the publisher. Established publishers, such as well-known academic journals, are more likely to adhere to high editorial standards and publishing ethics.
  • Author Credentials : Evaluate the credentials and expertise of the authors. Check their affiliations, academic credentials, and past publications to assess their authority in the field.
  • Citations and References : Examine the citations and references provided in the article. A well-researched article will cite credible sources to support its arguments and findings. Verify the accuracy of the cited sources and ensure they are from reputable sources.
  • Publication Date : Consider the publication date of the article. While older articles may still be relevant, particularly in certain fields, it is best to prioritize recent publications for up-to-date research and findings.
  • Journal Impact Factor : Assess the journal's impact factor or other metrics that indicate its influence and reputation within the academic community. Higher impact factor journals are generally considered more prestigious and reliable. 
Tip: Journal Citation Reports (JCR), produced by Clarivate Analytics, is a widely used source for impact factor data. You can access JCR through academic libraries or directly from the Clarivate Analytics website if you have a subscription.
  • Peer Recommendations : Seek recommendations from peers, mentors, or professors in your field. They can provide valuable insights and guidance on reputable sources and journals within your area of study.
  • Cross-Verification : Cross-verify the information presented in the article with other credible sources. Compare findings, methodologies, and conclusions with similar studies to ensure consistency and reliability.

By employing these strategies, researchers can confidently evaluate the credibility and reliability of scholarly sources, ensuring the integrity of their research contributions in an ever-evolving landscape.

The Top 21 Free Online Journal and Research Databases

Navigating OA journals, research article databases, and academic websites trying to find high-quality sources for your research can really make your head spin. What constitutes a reliable database? What is a useful resource for your discipline and research topic? How can you find and access full-text, peer-reviewed articles?

Fortunately, we're here to help. Having covered some of the ins and outs of peer review, OA journals, and how to search for articles, we have compiled a list of the top 21 free online journals and the best research databases. This list of databases is a great resource to help you navigate the wide world of academic research.

These databases provide a variety of free sources, from abstracts and citations to full-text, peer-reviewed OA journals. With databases covering specific areas of research and interdisciplinary databases that provide a variety of material, these are some of our favorite free databases, and they're totally legit!

CORE is a multidisciplinary aggregator of OA research. CORE has the largest collection of OA articles available. It allows users to search more than 219 million OA articles. While most of these link to the full-text article on the original publisher's site, or to a PDF available for download, five million records are hosted directly on CORE.

CORE's mission statement is a simple and straightforward commitment to offering OA articles to anyone, anywhere in the world. They also host communities that are available for researchers to join and an ambassador community to enhance their services globally. In addition to a straightforward keyword search, CORE offers advanced search options to filter results by publication type, year, language, journal, repository, and author.

CORE's user interface is easy to use and navigate. Search results can be sorted based on relevance or recency, and you can search for relevant content directly from the results screen.

Collection : 219,537,133 OA articles

Other Services : Additional services are available from CORE, with extras that are geared toward researchers, repositories, and businesses. There are tools for accessing raw data, including an API that provides direct access to data, datasets that are available for download, and FastSync for syncing data content from the CORE database.

CORE has a recommender plug-in that suggests relevant OA content in the database while conducting a search and a discovery feature that helps you discover OA versions of paywalled articles. Other features include tools for managing content, such as a dashboard for managing repository output and the Repository Edition service to enhance discoverability.

Good Source of Peer-Reviewed Articles : Yes

Advanced Search Options : Language, author, journal, publisher, repository, DOI, year

2. ScienceOpen

Functioning as a research and publishing network, ScienceOpen offers OA to more than 74 million articles in all areas of science. Although you do need to register to view the full text of articles, registration is free. The advanced search function is highly detailed, allowing you to find exactly the research you're looking for.

The Berlin- and Boston-based company was founded in 2013 to "facilitate open and public communications between academics and to allow ideas to be judged on their merit, regardless of where they come from." Search results can be exported for easy integration with reference management systems.

You can also bookmark articles for later research. There are extensive networking options, including your Science Open profile, a forum for interacting with other researchers, the ability to track your usage and citations, and an interactive bibliography. Users have the ability to review articles and provide their knowledge and insight within the community.

Collection : 74,560,631

Other Services : None

Advanced Search Options :   Content type, source, author, journal, discipline

3. Directory of Open Access Journals

A multidisciplinary, community-curated directory, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) gives researchers access to high-quality peer-reviewed journals. It has archived more than two million articles from 17,193 journals, allowing you to either browse by subject or search by keyword.

The site was launched in 2003 with the aim of increasing the visibility of OA scholarly journals online. Content on the site covers subjects from science, to law, to fine arts, and everything in between. DOAJ has a commitment to "increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, OA scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language."

Information about the journal is available with each search result. Abstracts are also available in a collapsible format directly from the search screen. The scholarly article website is somewhat simple, but it is easy to navigate. There are 16 principles of transparency and best practices in scholarly publishing that clearly outline DOAJ policies and standards.

Collection : 6,817,242

Advanced Search Options :   Subject, journal, year

4. Education Resources Information Center

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) of the Institution of Education Sciences allows you to search by topic for material related to the field of education. Links lead to other sites, where you may have to purchase the information, but you can search for full-text articles only. You can also search only peer-reviewed sources.

The service primarily indexes journals, gray literature (such as technical reports, white papers, and government documents), and books. All sources of material on ERIC go through a formal review process prior to being indexed. ERIC's selection policy is available as a PDF on their website.

The ERIC website has an extensive FAQ section to address user questions. This includes categories like general questions, peer review, and ERIC content. There are also tips for advanced searches, as well as general guidance on the best way to search the database. ERIC is an excellent database for content specific to education.

Collection : 1,292,897

Advanced Search Options : Boolean

5. arXiv e-Print Archive

The arXiv e-Print Archive is run by Cornell University Library and curated by volunteer moderators, and it now offers OA to more than one million e-prints.

There are advisory committees for all eight subjects available on the database. With a stated commitment to an "emphasis on openness, collaboration, and scholarship," the arXiv e-Print Archive is an excellent STEM resource.

The interface is not as user-friendly as some of the other databases available, and the website hosts a blog to provide news and updates, but it is otherwise a straightforward math and science resource. There are simple and advanced search options, and, in addition to conducting searches for specific topics and articles, users can browse content by subject. The arXiv e-Print Archive clearly states that they do not peer review the e-prints in the database.

Collection : 1,983,891

Good Source of Peer-Reviewed Articles : No

Advanced Search Options :   Subject, date, title, author, abstract, DOI

6. Social Science Research Network

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a collection of papers from the social sciences community. It is a highly interdisciplinary platform used to search for scholarly articles related to 67 social science topics. SSRN has a variety of research networks for the various topics available through the free scholarly database.

The site offers more than 700,000 abstracts and more than 600,000 full-text papers. There is not yet a specific option to search for only full-text articles, but, because most of the papers on the site are free access, it's not often that you encounter a paywall. There is currently no option to search for only peer-reviewed articles.

You must become a member to use the services, but registration is free and enables you to interact with other scholars around the world. SSRN is "passionately committed to increasing inclusion, diversity and equity in scholarly research," and they encourage and discuss the use of inclusive language in scholarship whenever possible.

Collection : 1,058,739 abstracts; 915,452 articles

Advanced Search Options : Term, author, date, network

7. Public Library of Science

Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a big player in the world of OA science. Publishing 12 OA journals, the nonprofit organization is committed to facilitating openness in academic research. According to the site, "all PLOS content is at the highest possible level of OA, meaning that scientific articles are immediately and freely available to anyone, anywhere."

PLOS outlines four fundamental goals that guide the organization: break boundaries, empower researchers, redefine quality, and open science. All PLOS journals are peer-reviewed, and all 12 journals uphold rigorous ethical standards for research, publication, and scientific reporting.

PLOS does not offer advanced search options. Content is organized by topic into research communities that users can browse through, in addition to options to search for both articles and journals. The PLOS website also has resources for peer reviewers, including guidance on becoming a reviewer and on how to best participate in the peer review process.

Collection : 12 journals

Advanced Search Options : None

8. OpenDOAR

OpenDOAR, or the Directory of Open Access Repositories, is a comprehensive resource for finding free OA journals and articles. Using Google Custom Search, OpenDOAR combs through OA repositories around the world and returns relevant research in all disciplines.

The repositories it searches through are assessed and categorized by OpenDOAR staff to ensure they meet quality standards. Inclusion criteria for the database include requirements for OA content, global access, and categorically appropriate content, in addition to various other quality assurance measures. OpenDOAR has metadata, data, content, preservation, and submission policies for repositories, in addition to two OA policy statements regarding minimum and optimum recommendations.

This database allows users to browse and search repositories, which can then be selected, and articles and data can be accessed from the repository directly. As a repository database, much of the content on the site is geared toward the support of repositories and OA standards.

Collection : 5,768 repositories

Other Services : OpenDOAR offers a variety of additional services. Given the nature of the platform, services are primarily aimed at repositories and institutions, and there is a marked focus on OA in general. Sherpa services are OA archiving tools for authors and institutions.

They also offer various resources for OA support and compliance regarding standards and policies. The publication router matches publications and publishers with appropriate repositories.

There are also services and resources from JISC for repositories for cost management, discoverability, research impact, and interoperability, including ORCID consortium membership information. Additionally, a repository self-assessment tool is available for members.

Advanced Search Options :   Name, organization name, repository type, software name, content type, subject, country, region

9. Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) is operated by the Bielefeld University Library in Germany, and it offers more than 240 million documents from more than 8,000 sources. Sixty percent of its content is OA, and you can filter your search accordingly.

BASE has rigorous inclusion requirements for content providers regarding quality and relevance, and they maintain a list of content providers for the sake of transparency, which can be easily found on their website. BASE has a fairly elegant interface. Search results can be organized by author, title, or date.

From the search results, items can be selected and exported, added to favorites, emailed, and searched in Google Scholar. There are basic and advanced search features, with the advanced search offering numerous options for refining search criteria. There is also a feature on the website that saves recent searches without additional steps from the user.

Collection : 276,019,066 documents; 9,286 content providers

Advanced Search Options :   Author, subject, year, content provider, language, document type, access, terms of reuse

Research Databases

10. Digital Library of the Commons Repository

Run by Indiana University, the Digital Library of the Commons (DLC) Repository is a multidisciplinary journal repository that allows users to access thousands of free and OA articles from around the world. You can browse by document type, date, author, title, and more or search for keywords relevant to your topic.

DCL also offers the Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons, an image database, and a keyword thesaurus for enhanced search parameters. The repository includes books, book chapters, conference papers, journal articles, surveys, theses and dissertations, and working papers. DCL advanced search features drop-down menus of search types with built-in Boolean search options.

Searches can be sorted by relevance, title, date, or submission date in ascending or descending order. Abstracts are included in selected search results, with access to full texts available, and citations can be exported from the same page. Additionally, the image database search includes tips for better search results.

Collection : 10,784

Advanced Search Options :   Author, date, title, subject, sector, region, conference

11. CIA World Factbook

The CIA World Factbook is a little different from the other resources on this list in that it is not an online journal directory or repository. It is, however, a useful free online research database for academics in a variety of disciplines.

All the information is free to access, and it provides facts about every country in the world, which are organized by category and include information about history, geography, transportation, and much more. The World Factbook can be searched by country or region, and there is also information about the world's oceans.

This site contains resources related to the CIA as an organization rather than being a scientific journal database specifically. The site has a user interface that is easy to navigate. The site also provides a section for updates regarding changes to what information is available and how it is organized, making it easier to interact with the information you are searching for.

Collection : 266 countries

12. Paperity

Paperity boasts its status as the "first multidisciplinary aggregator of OA journals and papers." Their focus is on helping you avoid paywalls while connecting you to authoritative research. In addition to providing readers with easy access to thousands of journals, Paperity seeks to help authors reach their audiences and help journals increase their exposure to boost readership.

Paperity has journal articles for every discipline, and the database offers more than a dozen advanced search options, including the length of the paper and the number of authors. There is even an option to include, exclude, or exclusively search gray papers.

Paperity is available for mobile, with both a mobile site and the Paperity Reader, an app that is available for both Android and Apple users. The database is also available on social media. You can interact with Paperity via Twitter and Facebook, and links to their social media are available on their homepage, including their Twitter feed.

Collection : 8,837,396

Advanced Search Options : Title, abstract, journal title, journal ISSN, publisher, year of publication, number of characters, number of authors, DOI, author, affiliation, language, country, region, continent, gray papers

13. dblp Computer Science Bibliography

The dblp Computer Science Bibliography is an online index of major computer science publications. dblp was founded in 1993, though until 2010 it was a university-specific database at the University of Trier in Germany. It is currently maintained by the Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics.

Although it provides access to both OA articles and those behind a paywall, you can limit your search to only OA articles. The site indexes more than three million publications, making it an invaluable resource in the world of computer science. dblp entries are color-coded based on the type of item.

dblp has an extensive FAQ section, so questions that might arise about topics like the database itself, navigating the website, or the data on dblp, in addition to several other topics, are likely to be answered. The website also hosts a blog and has a section devoted to website statistics.

Collection : 5,884,702

14. EconBiz

EconBiz is a great resource for economic and business studies. A service of the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, it offers access to full texts online, with the option of searching for OA material only. Their literature search is performed across multiple international databases.

EconBiz has an incredibly useful research skills section, with resources such as Guided Walk, a service to help students and researchers navigate searches, evaluate sources, and correctly cite references; the Research Guide EconDesk, a help desk to answer specific questions and provide advice to aid in literature searches; and the Academic Career Kit for what they refer to as Early Career Researchers.

Other helpful resources include personal literature lists, a calendar of events for relevant calls for papers, conferences, and workshops, and an economics terminology thesaurus to help in finding keywords for searches. To stay up-to-date with EconBiz, you can sign up for their newsletter.

Collection : 1,075,219

Advanced Search Options :   Title, subject, author, institution, ISBN/ISSN, journal, publisher, language, OA only

15. BioMed Central

BioMed Central provides OA research from more than 300 peer-reviewed journals. While originally focused on resources related to the physical sciences, math, and engineering, BioMed Central has branched out to include journals that cover a broader range of disciplines, with the aim of providing a single platform that provides OA articles for a variety of research needs. You can browse these journals by subject or title, or you can search all articles for your required keyword.

BioMed Central has a commitment to peer-reviewed sources and to the peer review process itself, continually seeking to help and improve the peer review process. They're "committed to maintaining high standards through full and stringent peer review."

Additionally, the website includes resources to assist and support editors as part of their commitment to providing high-quality, peer-reviewed OA articles.

Collection : 507,212

Other Services : BMC administers the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) registry. While initially designed for registering clinical trials, since its creation in 2000, the registry has broadened its scope to include other health studies as well.

The registry is recognized by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, as well as the World Health Organization (WHO), and it meets the requirements established by the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

The study records included in the registry are all searchable and free to access. The ISRCTN registry "supports transparency in clinical research, helps reduce selective reporting of results and ensures an unbiased and complete evidence base."

Advanced Search Options :   Author, title, journal, list

A multidisciplinary search engine, JURN provides links to various scholarly websites, articles, and journals that are free to access or OA. Covering the fields of the arts, humanities, business, law, nature, science, and medicine, JURN has indexed almost 5,000 repositories to help you find exactly what you're looking for.

Search features are enhanced by Google, but searches are filtered through their index of repositories. JURN seeks to reach a wide audience, with their search engine tailored to researchers from "university lecturers and students seeking a strong search tool for OA content" and "advanced and ambitious students, age 14-18" to "amateur historians and biographers" and "unemployed and retired lecturers."

That being said, JURN is very upfront about its limitations. They admit to not being a good resource for educational studies, social studies, or psychology, and conference archives are generally not included due to frequently unstable URLs.

Collection : 5,064 indexed journals

Other Services : JURN has a browser add-on called UserScript. This add-on allows users to integrate the JURN database directly into Google Search. When performing a search through Google, the add-on creates a link that sends the search directly to JURN CSE. JURN CSE is a search service that is hosted by Google.

Clicking the link from the Google Search bar will run your search through the JURN database from the Google homepage. There is also an interface for a DuckDuckGo search box; while this search engine has an emphasis on user privacy, for smaller sites that may be indexed by JURN, DuckDuckGo may not provide the same depth of results.

Advanced Search Options :   Google search modifiers

Dryad is a digital repository of curated, OA scientific research data. Launched in 2009, it is run by a not-for-profit membership organization, with a community of institutional and publisher members for whom their services have been designed. Members include institutions such as Stanford, UCLA, and Yale, as well as publishers like Oxford University Press and Wiley.

Dryad aims to "promote a world where research data is openly available, integrated with the scholarly literature, and routinely reused to create knowledge." It is free to access for the search and discovery of data. Their user experience is geared toward easy self-depositing, supports Creative Commons licensing, and provides DOIs for all their content.

Note that there is a publishing charge associated if you wish to publish your data in Dryad.  When searching datasets, they are accompanied by author information and abstracts for the associated studies, and citation information is provided for easy attribution.

Collection : 44,458

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Run by the British Library, the E-Theses Online Service (EThOS) allows you to search over 500,000 doctoral theses in a variety of disciplines. All of the doctoral theses available on EThOS have been awarded by higher education institutions in the United Kingdom.

Although some full texts are behind paywalls, you can limit your search to items available for immediate download, either directly through EThOS or through an institution's website. More than half of the records in the database provide access to full-text theses.

EThOS notes that they do not hold all records for all institutions, but they strive to index as many doctoral theses as possible, and the database is constantly expanding, with approximately 3,000 new records added and 2,000 new full-text theses available every month. The availability of full-text theses is dependent on multiple factors, including their availability in the institutional repository and the level of repository development.

Collection : 500,000+

Advanced Search Options : Abstract, author's first name, author's last name, awarding body, current institution, EThOS ID, year, language, qualifications, research supervisor, sponsor/funder, keyword, title

PubMed is a research platform well-known in the fields of science and medicine. It was created and developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It has been available since 1996 and offers access to "more than 33 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books."

While PubMed does not provide full-text articles directly, and many full-text articles may be behind paywalls or require subscriptions to access them, when articles are available from free sources, such as through PubMed Central (PMC), those links are provided with the citations and abstracts that PubMed does provide.

PMC, which was established in 2000 by the NLM, is a free full-text archive that includes more than 6,000,000 records. PubMed records link directly to corresponding PMC results. PMC content is provided by publishers and other content owners, digitization projects, and authors directly.

Collection : 33,000,000+

Advanced Search Options : Author's first name, author's last name, identifier, corporation, date completed, date created, date entered, date modified, date published, MeSH, book, conflict of interest statement, EC/RN number, editor, filter, grant number, page number, pharmacological action, volume, publication type, publisher, secondary source ID, text, title, abstract, transliterated title

20. Semantic Scholar

A unique and easy-to-use resource, Semantic Scholar defines itself not just as a research database but also as a "search and discovery tool." Semantic Scholar harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to efficiently sort through millions of science-related papers based on your search terms.

Through this singular application of machine learning, Semantic Scholar expands search results to include topic overviews based on your search terms, with the option to create an alert for or further explore the topic. It also provides links to related topics.

In addition, search results produce "TLDR" summaries in order to provide concise overviews of articles and enhance your research by helping you to navigate quickly and easily through the available literature to find the most relevant information. According to the site, although some articles are behind paywalls, "the data [they] have for those articles is limited," so you can expect to receive mostly full-text results.

Collection : 203,379,033

Other Services : Semantic Scholar supports multiple popular browsers. Content can be accessed through both mobile and desktop versions of Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera.

Additionally, Semantic Scholar provides browser extensions for both Chrome and Firefox, so AI-powered scholarly search results are never more than a click away. The mobile interface includes an option for Semantic Swipe, a new way of interacting with your research results.

There are also beta features that can be accessed as part of the Beta Program, which will provide you with features that are being actively developed and require user feedback for further improvement.

Advanced Search Options : Field of study, date range, publication type, author, journal, conference, PDF

Zenodo, powered by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), was launched in 2013. Taking its name from Zenodotus, the first librarian of the ancient library of Alexandria, Zenodo is a tool "built and developed by researchers, to ensure that everyone can join in open science." Zenodo accepts all research from every discipline in any file format.

However, Zenodo also curates uploads and promotes peer-reviewed material that is available through OA. A DOI is assigned to everything that is uploaded to Zenodo, making research easily findable and citable. You can sort by keyword, title, journal, and more and download OA documents directly from the site.

While there are closed access and restricted access items in the database, the vast majority of research is OA material. Search results can be filtered by access type, making it easy to view the free articles available in the database.

Collection : 2,220,000+

Advanced Search Options : Access, file type, keywords

Check out our roundup of free research databases as a handy one-page PDF.

How to find peer-reviewed articles.

There are a lot of free scholarly articles available from various sources. The internet is a big place. So how do you go about finding peer-reviewed articles when conducting your research? It's important to make sure you are using reputable sources.

The first source of the article is the person or people who wrote it. Checking out the author can give you some initial insight into how much you can trust what you’re reading. Looking into the publication information of your sources can also indicate whether the article is reliable.

Aspects of the article, such as subject and audience, tone, and format, are other things you can look at when evaluating whether the article you're using is valid, reputable, peer-reviewed material. So, let's break that down into various components so you can assess your research to ensure that you're using quality articles and conducting solid research.

Check the Author

Peer-reviewed articles are written by experts or scholars with experience in the field or discipline they're writing about. The research in a peer-reviewed article has to pass a rigorous evaluation process, so it's a foregone conclusion that the author(s) of a peer-reviewed article should have experience or training related to that research.

When evaluating an article, take a look at the author's information. What credentials does the author have to indicate that their research has scholarly weight behind it? Finding out what type of degree the author has—and what that degree is in—can provide insight into what kind of authority the author is on the subject.

Something else that might lend credence to the author's scholarly role is their professional affiliation. A look at what organization or institution they are affiliated with can tell you a lot about their experience or expertise. Where were they trained, and who is verifying their research?

Identify Subject and Audience

The ultimate goal of a study is to answer a question. Scholarly articles are also written for scholarly audiences, especially articles that have gone through the peer review process. This means that the author is trying to reach experts, researchers, academics, and students in the field or topic the research is based on.

Think about the question the author is trying to answer by conducting this research, why, and for whom. What is the subject of the article? What question has it set out to answer? What is the purpose of finding the information? Is the purpose of the article of importance to other scholars? Is it original content?

Research should also be approached analytically. Is the methodology sound? Is the author using an analytical approach to evaluate the data that they have obtained? Are the conclusions they've reached substantiated by their data and analysis? Answering these questions can reveal a lot about the article's validity.

Format Matters

Reliable articles from peer-reviewed sources have certain format elements to be aware of. The first is an abstract. An abstract is a short summary or overview of the article. Does the article have an abstract? It's unlikely that you're reading a peer-reviewed article if it doesn't. Peer-reviewed journals will also have a word count range. If an article seems far too short or incredibly long, that may be reason to doubt it.

Another feature of reliable articles is the sections the information is divided into. Peer-reviewed research articles will have clear, concise sections that appropriately organize the information. This might include a literature review, methodology, results (in the case of research articles), and a conclusion.

One of the most important sections is the references or bibliography. This is where the researcher lists all the sources of their information. A peer-reviewed source will have a comprehensive reference section.

An article that has been written to reach an academic community will have an academic tone. The language that is used, and the way this language is used, is important to consider. If the article is riddled with grammatical errors, confusing syntax, and casual language, it almost definitely didn't make it through the peer review process.

Also consider the use of terminology. Every discipline is going to have standard terminology or jargon that can be used and understood by other academics in the discipline. The language in a peer-reviewed article is going to reflect that.

If the author is going out of their way to explain simple terms, or terms that are standard to the field or discipline, it's unlikely that the article has been peer reviewed, as this is something that the author would be asked to address during the review process.

Publication

The source of the article will be a very good indicator of the likelihood that it was peer reviewed. Where was the article published? Was it published alongside other academic articles in the same discipline? Is it a legitimate and reputable scholarly publication?

A trade publication or newspaper might be legitimate or reputable, but it is not a scholarly source, and it will not have been subject to the peer review process. Scholarly journals are the best resource for peer-reviewed articles, but it's important to remember that not all scholarly journals are peer reviewed.

It's helpful to look at a scholarly source's website, as peer-reviewed journals will have a clear indication of the peer review process. University libraries, institutional repositories, and reliable databases (and now you have a list of legit ones) can also help provide insight into whether an article comes from a peer-reviewed journal.

Free Online Journal

Common Research Mistakes to Avoid

Research is a lot of work. Even with high standards and good intentions, it's easy to make mistakes. Perhaps you searched for access to scientific journals for free and found the perfect peer-reviewed sources, but you forgot to document everything, and your references are a mess. Or, you only searched for free online articles and missed out on a ground-breaking study that was behind a paywall.

Whether your research is for a degree or to get published or to satisfy your own inquisitive nature, or all of the above, you want all that work to produce quality results. You want your research to be thorough and accurate.

To have any hope of contributing to the literature on your research topic, your results need to be high quality. You might not be able to avoid every potential mistake, but here are some that are both common and easy to avoid.

Sticking to One Source

One of the hallmarks of good research is a healthy reference section. Using a variety of sources gives you a better answer to your question. Even if all of the literature is in agreement, looking at various aspects of the topic may provide you with an entirely different picture than you would have if you looked at your research question from only one angle.

Not Documenting Every Fact

As you conduct your research, do yourself a favor and write everything down. Everything you include in your paper or article that you got from another source is going to need to be added to your references and cited.

It's important, especially if your aim is to conduct ethical, high-quality research, that all of your research has proper attribution. If you don't document as you go, you could end up making a lot of work for yourself if the information you don't write down is something that later, as you write your paper, you really need.

Using Outdated Materials

Academia is an ever-changing landscape. What was true in your academic discipline or area of research ten years ago may have since been disproven. If fifteen studies have come out since the article that you're using was published, it's more than a little likely that you're going to be basing your research on flawed or dated information.

If the information you're basing your research on isn't as up-to-date as possible, your research won't be of quality or able to stand up to any amount of scrutiny. You don't want all of your hard work to be for naught.

Relying Solely on Open Access Journals

OA is a great resource for conducting academic research. There are high-quality journal articles available through OA, and that can be very helpful for your research. But, just because you have access to free articles, that doesn't mean that there's nothing to be found behind a paywall.

Just as dismissing high-quality peer-reviewed articles because they are OA would be limiting, not exploring any paid content at all is equally short-sighted. If you're seeking to conduct thorough and comprehensive research, exploring all of your options for quality sources is going to be to your benefit.

Digging Too Deep or Not Deep Enough

Research is an art form, and it involves a delicate balance of information. If you conduct your research using only broad search terms, you won't be able to answer your research question well, or you'll find that your research provides information that is closely related to your topic but, ultimately, your findings are vague and unsubstantiated.

On the other hand, if you delve deeply into your research topic with specific searches and turn up too many sources, you might have a lot of information that is adjacent to your topic but without focus and perhaps not entirely relevant. It's important to answer your research question concisely but thoroughly.

Different Types of Scholarly Articles

Different types of scholarly articles have different purposes. An original research article, also called an empirical article, is the product of a study or an experiment. This type of article seeks to answer a question or fill a gap in the existing literature.

Research articles will have a methodology, results, and a discussion of the findings of the experiment or research and typically a conclusion.

Review articles overview the current literature and research and provide a summary of what the existing research indicates or has concluded. This type of study will have a section for the literature review, as well as a discussion of the findings of that review. Review articles will have a particularly extensive reference or bibliography section.

Theoretical articles draw on existing literature to create new theories or conclusions, or look at current theories from a different perspective, to contribute to the foundational knowledge of the field of study.

10 Tips for Navigating Journal Databases

Use the right academic journal database for your search, be that interdisciplinary or specific to your field. Or both!

If it's an option, set the search results to return only peer-reviewed sources.

Start by using search terms that are relevant to your topic without being overly specific.

Try synonyms, especially if your keywords aren't returning the desired results.

Scholarly Journal Articles

Even if you've found some good articles, try searching using different terms.

Explore the advanced search features of the database(s).

Learn to use Booleans (AND, OR, NOT) to expand or narrow your results.

Once you've gotten some good results from a more general search, try narrowing your search.

Read through abstracts when trying to find articles relevant to your research.

Keep track of your research and use citation tools. It'll make life easier when it comes time to compile your references.

7 Frequently Asked Questions

1. how do i get articles for free.

Free articles can be found through free online academic journals, OA databases, or other databases that include OA journals and articles. These resources allow you to access free papers online so you can conduct your research without getting stuck behind a paywall.

Academics don't receive payment for the articles they contribute to journals. There are often, in fact, publication fees that scholars pay in order to publish. This is one of the funding structures that allows OA journals to provide free content so that you don't have to pay fees or subscription costs to access journal articles.

2. How Do I Find Journal Articles?

Journal articles can be found in databases and institutional repositories that can be accessed at university libraries. However, online research databases that contain OA articles are the best resource for getting free access to journal articles that are available online.

Peer-reviewed journal articles are the best to use for academic research, and there are a number of databases where you can find peer-reviewed OA journal articles. Once you've found a useful article, you can look through the references for the articles the author used to conduct their research, and you can then search online databases for those articles, too.

3. How Do I Find Peer-Reviewed Articles?

Peer-reviewed articles can be found in reputable scholarly peer-reviewed journals. High-quality journals and journal articles can be found online using academic search engines and free research databases. These resources are excellent for finding OA articles, including peer-reviewed articles.

OA articles are articles that can be accessed for free. While some scholarly search engines and databases include articles that aren't peer reviewed, there are also some that provide only peer-reviewed articles, and databases that include non-peer-reviewed articles often have advanced search features that enable you to select "peer review only." The database will return results that are exclusively peer-reviewed content.

4. What Are Research Databases?

A research database is a list of journals, articles, datasets, and/or abstracts that allows you to easily search for scholarly and academic resources and conduct research online. There are databases that are interdisciplinary and cover a variety of topics.

For example, Paperity might be a great resource for a chemist as well as a linguist, and there are databases that are more specific to a certain field. So, while ERIC might be one of the best educational databases available for OA content, it's not going to be one of the best databases for finding research in the field of microbiology.

5. How Do I Find Scholarly Articles for Specific Fields?

There are interdisciplinary research databases that provide articles in a variety of fields, as well as research databases that provide articles that cater to specific disciplines. Additionally, a journal repository or index can be a helpful resource for finding articles in a specific field.

When searching an interdisciplinary database, there are frequently advanced search features that allow you to narrow the search results down so that they are specific to your field. Selecting "psychology" in the advanced search features will return psychology journal articles in your search results. You can also try databases that are specific to your field.

If you're searching for law journal articles, many law reviews are OA. If you don't know of any databases specific to history, visiting a journal repository or index and searching "history academic journals" can return a list of journals specific to history and provide you with a place to begin your research.

6. Are Peer-Reviewed Articles Really More Legitimate?

The short answer is yes, peer-reviewed articles are more legitimate resources for academic research. The peer review process provides legitimacy, as it is a rigorous review of the content of an article that is performed by scholars and academics who are experts in their field of study. The review provides an evaluation of the quality and credibility of the article.

Non-peer-reviewed articles are not subject to a review process and do not undergo the same level of scrutiny. This means that non-peer-reviewed articles are unlikely, or at least not as likely, to meet the same standards that peer-reviewed articles do.

7. Are Free Article Directories Legitimate?

Yes! As with anything, some databases are going to be better for certain requirements than others. But, a scholarly article database being free is not a reason in itself to question its legitimacy.

Free scholarly article databases can provide access to abstracts, scholarly article websites, journal repositories, and high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles. The internet has a lot of information, and it's often challenging to figure out what information is reliable. 

Research databases and article directories are great resources to help you conduct your research. Our list of the best research paper websites is sure to provide you with sources that are totally legit.

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Within the academic world, research is fundamental to the progress of knowledge and scholarly achievements. Securing the appropriate academic resources can greatly facilitate your academic journey. From undergraduates beginning to explore a novel subject, to graduate students deeply engaged in writing their thesis , or seasoned researchers advancing the frontiers of their disciplines, the digital era presents an abundance of academic research tools readily accessible with just a few clicks.

Here, we delve into the top 10 academic research resources, highlighting their key features and how they can serve as indispensable tools for academic research.

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First, let’s begin by understanding what are considered as academic sources:

What are academic sources?

Academic research resources are specialized tools and databases designed to support scholarly research and academic inquiry. These resources encompass a wide array of materials and platforms that provide access to peer-reviewed journal articles , books, thesis , research papers , and other scholarly content. 

The primary purpose of these resources is to facilitate the discovery and access to reliable, authoritative information that can be used for academic writing , research projects, and scholarly exploration.

Now, you must be wondering, how to find academic sources or where to find academic sources. Don’t worry, we have listed down the best academic research tools to make it easy for you!

10 Best tools for academic research

Listed below are some of the top examples of academic sources for students, teachers, scholars, and learners:

1. PubMed Central (PMC)

What are academic sources if not peer-reviewed articles and research findings? And PubMed Central gives you just that. PubMed Central stands out as 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. 

PMC is an essential academic resource for students and researchers in the medical and health sciences, offering access to more than 6 million research articles . It’s a go-to for anyone looking for academic sources for research in these fields, providing a wealth of academic research tools to aid in your studies or investigations.

2. Library of Congress (LOC)

As the largest library in the world, it houses millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts . Its extensive digital collections make it one of the best websites for academic research, especially for those in humanities and social sciences. 

The LOC’s online catalog and digital collections serve as excellent academic resource examples, enabling scholars to explore historical books, photographs, and documents from the comfort of their desks. It can be a useful resource for writing essays and assignments .

3. ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. With millions of users, it stands out as one of the top online academic resources, fostering a community where peers can exchange knowledge. 

It’s an invaluable tool for finding academic source examples and collaborating on research projects, making it much easier to find academic sources relevant to your work.

4. Google Scholar

Google Scholar offers a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, dissertations , books, abstracts, and court opinions.

These academic sources are from academic publishers , professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other websites. This makes it one of the best online academic research platforms for finding free academic resources across a wide range of subjects.

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students, providing access to thousands of journals , books, and primary sources on a wide variety of subjects. This platform is especially valuable for those in the humanities and social sciences.

It’s a prime example of where to find academic sources that are peer-reviewed and reliable, embodying what academic research resources should offer.

6. Google Books

Google Books is a vast database of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. It is one of the best academic resources for college students.

Researchers and students can use Google Books to find examples of academic sources and previews or the full text of books across a myriad of subjects. This resource is particularly useful for finding and citing book sources in academic papers.

7. Science.gov

Science.gov serves as a powerful tool for academic writing resources, searching through over 60 databases and more than 2,200 scientific websites. 

It provides users with access to over 200 million pages of authoritative federal science information, including research and development results. It’s an example of academic sources websites that cater to those in the STEM fields, offering free academic resources.

8. BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)

BASE is one of the world’s most voluminous search engines, especially for academic web resources. BASE provides more than 240 million documents from more than 8,000 sources.

You can access the full texts of about 60% of the indexed documents for free. BASE is an excellent academic resource for finding scholarly internet resources.

9. Microsoft Academic

Microsoft Academic (now part of Microsoft Research) is a free public web search engine for academic publications and literature , developed by Microsoft Research. It offered a unique way to search academic resources, utilizing semantic search capabilities. 

This approach was considered a direct competitor to Google Scholar. Although it was discontinued in 2022, its database still serves as a valuable archive for historical academic research.

10. iSeek Education

iSeek Education is a targeted search engine for students, teachers, and administrators. It offers safe, smart, and reliable resources for your academic research. 

This engine filters out irrelevant content to give you trustworthy websites and credible articles, making it easier to find academic resources for college students and professionals alike.

Utilizing academic research resources

Navigating through these 10 academic resources provides a pathway to enriching your academic projects and research endeavors. From academic research websites like PubMed Central for life sciences literature to broad-based search engines like Google Scholar, each platform offers unique tools and databases to cater to the diverse needs of the academic community. 

Remember, the key to effective research is not just in knowing what academic resources are but also in understanding how to use them efficiently. Each platform offers examples of academic sources, from peer-reviewed journal articles, lab reports , and research papers to historical documents and books. 

By familiarizing yourself with these tools for academic research, you’ll be better equipped to navigate the vast ocean of knowledge and find those scholarly gems that can support your arguments and illuminate your path to discovery.

As experts in academic editing and proofreading services , PaperTrue is always happy to help students and scholars polish their academic work and underscore its uniqueness!

For more useful information, keep on reading:

  • Research Paper Outline: Templates & Examples
  • How to Carry Out Secondary Research 
  • APA Header, Cover Page & Body-Paper Format Guidelines

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a resource qualify as an academic research resource, how can i access these top academic research resources for free, are there academic resources specific to certain fields of study, can i use google scholar for all my academic research needs, how do i know if the sources i find are reliable and academically credible.

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The Best Research and Reference Websites

Where to look when you need information

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Research websites come in handy in all kinds of situations, whether you're looking for the average rainfall in the Amazon rainforest, researching Roman history, or just having fun learning to find information.

This list of the best research websites will help greatly, and most of them are updated daily with new information.

I like to pair these sites with free research organizational tools to keep track of everything I gather online.

Best Research Websites

  • Library of Congress : LOC.gov lets you not only ask a librarian for help , but also search catalogs of libraries from all over the world. This is truly a huge resource that should be on your Top 10 best research sites list. Anything from Academia Sinica in Taiwan to Yale University in the U.S. is here and ready to be searched.
  • ReferenceDesk.org : Dubbed "The Internet's Best Reference Source," this extremely useful web directory provides everything from business and finance information to federal government resources, scholarship details, links to newspapers and calendars, search engines, and more.
  • Ask the Space Expert: NASA's source for space and science research help. Use the video links to listen to questions answered by experts. These are from 2013 through 2015.
  • USA.gov : This is where you should start when looking for specific U.S. government information. Learn about the country in general or education, housing, disability services, jobs, taxes, laws, and more.
  • Reference.com : Extremely simple to use with a basic layout, this reference website lets you browse by category or search by keywords to research everything from food and health to history, beauty, education, technology, vehicles, art, and more.
  • Refdesk.com : Billing itself as the internet's fact-checker, this site includes in-depth research links to breaking news, editorials, Today in History, Word of the Day, and other references.
  • Encyclopedia.com : The #1 online encyclopedia that lets you search over 200 reference books and encyclopedias at once. The Picks of the week is a neat section to examine each week.
  • Encyclopedia Britannica : One of the world's oldest encyclopedias online; has featured posts and category listings. The company launched in the 18th century and has been publishing exclusively online since 2011.
  • Purdue University Quick Reference : This site has tons of information that includes resources specific to Purdue University and surrounding areas in Indiana. It also includes an Ask a Librarian service.
  • Prescriber's Digital Reference : A wonderful research tool when gathering detailed medical information. The drug name browser includes summaries (dosage, description, and more) for hundreds of drugs.
  • iTools.com : Serves as a gateway for reference and research links. It uses other websites for its searches, like YouTube and Google.
  • ResearchGate : Scientific knowledge from over 160 million publication pages; browse topics in categories like engineering, biology, climate change, medicine, math, and more.
  • Baseball-Reference.com : Here's everything you ever wanted to know about baseball.
  • FOLDOC : Free Online Dictionary of Computing is a detailed computing dictionary for researching the meaning behind computer-related tools, standards, jargon, languages, and more. The "random" button is a fun way to learn new concepts.

Depending on the type of research you're doing or how you need to reference the information, you may need quick access to books. There are lots of places to find free book downloads , textbooks , and educational movies .

Other Ways to Do Research

Search engines like Google are a great way to perform online research. You can locate books, articles, interviews, and lots more. Learn how to search better to get the most out of your research.

Another top source of expert information is your local librarian— search for libraries near you at WorldCat . Librarians are trained to find answers to obscure questions, they're friendly, and best of all, you can talk with them face to face. They often ask you questions you might not have considered, leading to even better results. You can get help from librarians online, too, through some of the sources above.

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7 Best Websites for Accessing Online Research Journals and Papers

Last Updated May 17, 2023 By Saket Leave a Comment

Inside the article

In this period of digitization, all we need is to get an insight into the world of academia with just a click. The emergence of online digital libraries has changed the game for many around the world. This has granted liberty for many to read about the research going all over the world. It’s easy to use them both to do homework assignment  and to write a scientific study. These websites provide access to many research papers published in an enormous number of publications. By getting the best intellectual information, we are able to get pure and appropriate information about our topic of research.

Why You Should Use These Websites

Writing a research paper is a quite challenging task even if you are pretty good at your research topic. If you are writing, you must be aware of the fact that research work is the most complex and time-consuming process in the art of writing a research paper. These websites provide all the aids that overcome the needs of a researcher. Some websites also provide many handy tools to guide them in getting the best results.

The availability of multiple articles and research papers leads to a refined search and use. To date, there are a plethora of websites available to suffice this matter, but as they say good, better, best never let it rest. Here are the best-known research access portals available today.

1. Elsevier

It is for sure the best online research journal available on the internet. With thorough peer review and multiple topics, is what make it interesting to explore this website. With competitive features like an effective full-text search option and database, this is truly a website to look out for if you are into hardcore research.

2. Academia.edu

Academia is one of the most trusted websites for research papers in all areas of study. With over four and a half million users, it basically works as a social media platform for researchers just like Facebook. Primarily used to share the papers for free, it is considered one of the most popular websites for publishing them too. Its out-of-the-box features also include the capability of a user to monitor the impact of his published articles or papers and a compatible validation mechanism.

It is an online directory of open-access research journals and papers. DOAJ helps users to search within multiple areas of scientific topics in its overwhelming database. It is one of the most sought-after websites in the world for accessing research papers. By creating an account, you are joining a huge family of researchers and their high-quality R&D papers.

4 CORE.ac.uk

With an enormous population of research papers, this British-origin website is a trusted product for many years. You get to access more than half a million open-source papers at a click. Classified as a fast-growing website, it has a huge collection. Like others on this list, this is also a good option and definitely needs you to check it out at least once. You will surely find it quite relevant for your academic and research papers publishing and accessing requirements.

5.  ScienceOpen

It is like Mecca for scholarly publications. Being a highly professional website, it is expected to have specialization in peer review, article aggregation, Smart search, and indexing. You can publish and share scientific write-ups and information along with reviewing the papers. The sole motto of ScienceOpen is to provide maximum facilities to its users in a safe and legal manner.

6. ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)

Eric is an open-source resource digital library to search papers on a plethora of topics available in its repository. A website of American descent, it is the most sought-after resource due to the availability of grey literature. It provides access to millions of records that make it a leader in the academic and research community.

7. Microsoft Academic

This is a very powerful tool for searching and researching topics of any domain. Previously known as Microsoft Academic Search, it consists of some interesting features like information reading among many others. It uses new technologies like machine learning and knowledge discovery for the search capability that redefines the way you have been doing an academic search. With multiple versions and updates, this is certainly a huge project under the aegis of the tech giant Microsoft.

We really appreciate the fact that we have lots of academic information available on the internet that has defined the path of growth of many online search platforms. These websites make the data available to the people of any country, location, or institute.  These global resources play an important role in the lives of budding researchers. Along with this, if the platform also has popup apps, email pop up, exit pop-ups, pop-up games, and many more then these features will directly interact with more audience. In this context, an expert like “Tada” helps to increase subscribers by 500% and sales by 135% instantly.

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Literature Review

12 Best Tools For Perfect Research Summary Writing

Discover the 12 best tools to streamline your research summary writing, ensuring clarity and precision every time.

Aug 29, 2024

person making new notes - Research Summary

Consider you finally find the time to tackle that research paper for your class. You pull up your literature search and see dozens of articles and studies staring back at you. As you scroll through the titles and abstracts, you realize you need to figure out how to summarize the research to get started on your paper. 

Writing a practical research summary can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to. In this guide, we’ll break down what a research summary is, why it’s essential, and how to write one. This information lets you confidently write your research summary and finish your paper. 

Otio’s AI research and writing partner can help you write efficient research summaries and papers. Our tool can summarize academic articles so you can understand the material and finish your writing.

Table Of Contents

What is a research summary, purpose of a research summary, how do you write a research summary in 10 simple steps, what is a phd research summary, examples of research summary, supercharge your researching ability with otio — try otio for free today.

man with notes infront of him - Research Summary

A research summary is a piece of writing that summarizes your research on a specific topic. Its primary goal is to offer the reader a detailed study overview with critical findings. A research summary generally contains the structure of the article. 

You must know the goal of your analysis before you launch a project. A research overview summarizes the detailed response and highlights particular issues. Writing it may be troublesome. You want to start with a structure in mind to write a good overview. 

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woman focused on completing work - Research Summary

A research summary provides a brief overview of a study to readers. When searching for literature, a reader can quickly grasp the central ideas of a paper by reading its summary. It is also a great way to elaborate on the significance of the findings, reminding the reader of the strengths of your main arguments. 

Having a good summary is almost as important as writing a research paper. The benefit of summarizing is showing the "big picture," which allows the reader to contextualize your words. In addition to the advantages of summarizing for the reader, as a writer, you gain a better sense of where you are going with your writing, which parts need elaboration, and whether you have comprehended the information you have collected. 

man sitting alone in his room - Research Summary

1. Read The Entire Research Paper

Before writing a research summary , you must read and understand the entire research paper. This may seem like a time-consuming task, but it is essential to write a good summary. Make sure you know the paper's main points before you begin writing.

2. Take Notes As You Read

As you read, take notes on the main points of the paper. These notes will come in handy when you are writing your summary. Be sure to note any necessary information, such as the main conclusions of the author's writing. This helpful tip will also help you write a practical blog summary in less time.

3. Organize Your Thoughts

Once you have finished reading and taking notes on the paper, it is time to start writing your summary. Before you begin, take a few minutes to organize your thoughts. Write down the main points that you want to include in your summary. Then, arrange these points in a logical order.

4. Write The Summary

Now that you have organized your thoughts, it is time to start writing the summary. Begin by stating the author’s thesis statement or main conclusion. Then, briefly describe each of the main points from the paper. Be sure to write clearly and concisely. When you finish, reread your summary to ensure it accurately reflects the paper's content.

5. Write The Introduction

After you have written the summary, it is time to write the introduction. The introduction should include an overview of the paper and a summary description. It should also state the main idea.

6. Introduce The Report's Purpose

The summary of a research paper should include a brief description of the paper's purpose. It should state the paper's thesis statement and briefly describe each of the main points of the paper.

7. Use Keywords To Introduce The Report

When introducing the summary of a research paper, use keywords familiar to the reader. This will help them understand the summary and why it is essential.

8. State The Author's Conclusions

The summary of a research paper should include a brief statement of the author's conclusions. This will help your teacher understand what the paper is trying to achieve.

9. Keep It Concise

A summary should be concise and to the point. It should not include any new information or arguments. It should be one paragraph long at maximum.

10. Edit And Proofread

After you have written the summary, edit and proofread it to ensure it is accurate and precise. This will help ensure that your summary is effective and free of any grammar or spelling errors.

person using top tools - Research Summary

1. Otio: Your AI Research Assistant  

Knowledge workers, researchers, and students today need help with content overload and are left to deal with it using fragmented, complex, and manual tooling. Too many settle for stitching together complicated bookmarking, read-it-later, and note-taking apps to get through their workflows. Now that anyone can create content with a button, this problem will only worsen. Otio solves this problem by providing researchers with one AI-native workspace. It helps them: 

1. Collect a wide range of data sources, from bookmarks, tweets, and extensive books to YouTube videos. 

2. extract key takeaways with detailed ai-generated notes and source-grounded q&a chat. , 3. create draft outputs using the sources you’ve collected. .

Otio helps you to go from a reading list to the first draft faster. Along with this, Otio also enables you to write research papers/essays faster. Here are our top features that researchers love: AI-generated notes on all bookmarks (Youtube videos, PDFs, articles, etc.), Otio enables you to chat with individual links or entire knowledge bases, just like you chat with ChatGPT, as well as AI-assisted writing. 

Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner — try Otio for free today ! 

2. Hypotenuse AI: The Versatile Summarizer  

Like all the AI text summarizers on this list, Hypotenuse AI can take the input text and generate a short summary. One area where it stands out is its ability to handle various input options: You can simply copy-paste the text, directly upload a PDF, or even drop a YouTube link to create summaries. 

You can summarize nearly 200,000 characters (or 50,000 words) at once. 

Hypotenuse AI summarizes articles, PDFs, paragraphs, documents, and videos. 

With the AI tool, you can create engaging hooks and repurpose content for social media. 

You'll need a paid plan after the 7-day free trial. 

There needs to be a free plan available. 

The AI tool majorly focuses on generating eCommerce and marketing content. 

3. Scalenut: The Beginner-Friendly AI Summarizer  

Scalenut is one of the powerful AI text summarizers for beginners or anyone starting out. While it's not as polished as some other business-focused apps, it's significantly easier to use — and the output is just as good as others. If you want a basic online text summarizer that lets you summarize the notes within 800 characters (not words), Scalenut is your app. 

With Scalenut, you get a dedicated summary generation tool for more granular control. 

The keyword planner available helps build content directly from the short and sweet summaries. 

The AI tool integrates well with a whole suite of SEO tools, making it a more SEO-focused summarizer. 

You only get to generate one summary per day. 

Scalenut's paid plans are expensive compared to other AI tools. 

You must summarize long-form articles or blogs at most the limit of 800 characters. 

4. SciSummary: The Academic AI Summarizer  

SciSummary is an AI summarizer that helps summarize single or multiple research papers. It combines and compares the content summaries from research papers, article links, etc. 

It can save time and effort for scientists, students, and enthusiasts who want to keep up with the latest scientific developments. 

It can provide accurate and digestible summaries powered by advanced AI models that learn from feedback and expert guidance. 

It can help users read between the lines and understand complex scientific texts' main points and implications. 

It may only capture some nuances and details of the original articles or papers, which may be necessary for some purposes or audiences. 

Some types of scientific texts, such as highly technical, specialized, or interdisciplinary, may require more domain knowledge or context. 

Some sources of scientific information, such as websites, videos, or podcasts not in text format, may need help summarizing. 

5. Quillbot: The AI Summarizer for Academic Papers  

QuillBot uses advanced neural network models to summarize research papers accurately and effectively. The tool leverages cutting-edge technology to condense lengthy papers into concise and informative summaries, making it easier for users to navigate vast amounts of literature. 

You can upload the text for summarization directly from a document. 

It's excellent for summarizing essays, papers, and lengthy documents. 

You can summarize long texts up to 1200 words for free. 

The free plan is limited to professionals. 

There could have been some more output types. 

QuillBot's Premium plan only gives you 6000 words for summaries per month. 

6. Scribbr: The Research Paper Assistant  

Scribbr is an AI-driven academic writing assistant with a summarization feature tailored for research papers. The tool assists users in the research paper writing process by summarizing and condensing information from various sources, offering support in structuring and organizing content effectively. 

7. TLDR This: The Online Article Summarizer  

TLDR This uses advanced AI to effectively filter out unimportant arguments from online articles and provide readers only with vital takeaways. Its streamlined interface eliminates ads and distractions while summarizing key points, metadata, images, and other crucial article details. 

TLDR This condenses even very lengthy materials into compact summaries users can quickly consume, making it easier to process a vast range of internet content efficiently. 

Ten free "AI" summaries 

Summarization of long text 

Basic summary extraction 

Premium option cost 

No significant improvement in premium options 

8. AI Summarizer: The Text Document Summarizer  

AI Summarizer harnesses artificial intelligence to summarize research papers and other text documents automatically. The tool streamlines the summarization process, making it efficient and accurate, enabling users to extract essential information from extensive research papers efficiently. 

Easy-to-understand interface 

1500-word limit 

Multiple language support 

Contains advertisements 

Requires security captcha completion 

Struggles with lengthy content summarization 

9. Jasper: The Advanced Summarizer  

Jasper AI is a robust summarizing tool that helps users generate AI-powered paper summaries quickly and effectively. The tool supports the prompt creation of premium-quality summaries, assisting researchers in distilling complex information into concise and informative outputs. 

Jasper offers some advanced features, like generating a text from scratch and even summarizing it. 

It integrates well with third-party apps like Surfer, Grammarly, and its own AI art generator. 

It's versatile and can be used to create summaries of blogs, articles, website copy, emails, and even social media posts. 

There's no free plan available — though you get a 7-day free trial. 

You'll need to have a flexible budget to use Jasper AI. 

The Jasper app has a steep learning curve. 

10. Resoomer: The Summary Extractor  

Resoomer rapidly analyzes textual documents to determine the essential sentences and summarizes these key points using its proprietary semantic analysis algorithm. 

By automatically identifying what information matters most, Resoomer can condense elaborate texts across diverse subjects into brief overviews of their core message. With swift copy-and-paste functionality requiring no signup, this specialized tool simplifies the reading experience by extracting only vital details from complex writings. 

Clear and accurate summaries 

Creative sentence combining 

Variety of modes and options 

Lengthy text summarization without word limit in premium mode 

Confusing interface with irrelevant features 

Long-winded summaries spread across multiple pages 

11. Anyword: The Marketing-Focused Summarizer  

When I saw Anyword's summary, I could easily state that the content was unique and worth sharing, making this AI tool an excellent choice for marketers. Plus, it's very easy to use.  

Once you've copied-pasted the text and chosen a summary type, paragraph, keywords, or TL;DR, it generates a summary in minutes. Approve it; you can share the text directly without worrying about plagiarized content. 

You can test the AI tool with the 7-day free trial. 

The Anyword's text generator and summarizer are perfect for creating long-form pieces like blog posts with snippets. 

You can give detailed prompts to the AI tool to customize the generated text. 

Any word is expensive for a more limited set of features than other AI summarizers. 

It can sometimes be slower to use. 

There is no free Anyword plan available. 

12. Frase: The SEO Summarizer  

Frase is a powerful AI-powered summarizer that focuses on SEO. This means it can generate summaries that attract audiences and rank higher. Its proprietary model stands out, providing more flexibility, competitive pricing, and custom features. 

Frase uses BLUF and Reverse Pyramid techniques to generate summaries, improving ranking chances. 

It's free to use Frase's summary generator. 

Instead of GPT-3.5 or GPT-4, Frase uses its proprietary model. 

There's no way to add links to the blog or article to generate a summary. 

You can input up to 600-700 words for summarization. 

It might not be an ideal article summarizer for those who don't care about SEO. 

man working with Research Summary

A research summary for a PhD is called a research statement . The research statement (or statement of research interests) is included in academic job applications. It summarizes your research accomplishments, current work, and future direction and potential. The statement can discuss specific issues such as funding history and potential requirements for laboratory equipment and space and other resources, possible research and industrial collaborations, and how your research contributes to your field's future research direction. 

The research statement should be technical but intelligible to all department members, including those outside your subdiscipline. So keep the “big picture” in mind. The strongest research statements present a readable, compelling, and realistic research agenda that fits well with the department's needs, facilities, and goals. Research statements can be weakened by: overly ambitious proposals lack of apparent direction lack of big-picture focus, and inadequate attention to the needs and facilities of the department or position. 

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person sitting alone - Research Summary

Research Summary Example 1: A Look at the Probability of an Unexpected Volcanic Eruption in Yellowstone 

Introduction  .

If the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted massively , the consequences would be catastrophic for the United States. The importance of analyzing the likelihood of such an eruption cannot be overstated.  

Hypothesis  

An eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would be preceded by intense precursory activity manifesting a few weeks up to a few years in advance.  

Results     

Statistical data from multiple volcanic eruptions happening worldwide show activity that preceded these events (in particular, how early each type of activity was detected).   

Discussion and Conclusion  

Given that scientists continuously monitor Yellowstone and that signs of an eruption are normally detected much in advance, at least a few days in advance, the hypothesis is confirmed. This could be applied to creating emergency plans detailing an organized evacuation campaign and other response measures.     

Research Summary Example 2: The Frequency of Extreme Weather Events in the US from 2000-2008 as Compared to the ‘50s

Weather events bring immense material damage and cause human victims.    

Extreme weather events are significantly more frequent nowadays than in the ‘50s.   

Several categories of extreme events occur regularly now and then: droughts and associated fires, massive rainfall/snowfall and associated floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, Arctic cold waves, etc.   

Discussion and Conclusion 

Several extreme events have become significantly more frequent recently, confirming this hypothesis. This increasing frequency correlates reliably with rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere and growing temperatures worldwide. 

In the absence of another recent significant global change that could explain a higher frequency of disasters, and knowing how growing temperature disturbs weather patterns, it is natural to assume that global warming (CO2) causes this increase in frequency. This, in turn, suggests that this increased frequency of disasters is not a short-term phenomenon but is here to stay until we address CO2 levels.  

Researchers, students, and knowledge workers have long struggled with the initial stages of research projects. The early steps of gathering and organizing information , taking notes, and synthesizing the material into a coherent summary are vital for establishing a solid foundation for any research endeavor. 

These steps can be tedious, overwhelming, and time-consuming. Otio streamlines this process so you can go from the reading list to the first draft faster. Along with this, Otio also helps you write research papers/essays faster. Here are our top features that researchers love: 

AI-generated notes on all bookmarks (Youtube videos, PDFs, articles, etc.), Otio enables you to chat with individual links or entire knowledge bases, just like you chat with ChatGPT, as well as AI-assisted writing. 

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Collection  12 March 2023

Journal Top 100 - 2022

This collection highlights our most downloaded* research papers published in 2022. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an international community.

You can also check out the Top 100 across various subject areas here .

*Data obtained from SN Insights, which is based on Digital Science’s Dimensions.

image of abstract blue network

mRNA vaccine-induced antibodies more effective than natural immunity in neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 and its high affinity variants

  • Dominic Esposito

best research papers available sites

Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

  • Saho Takagi
  • Atsuko Saito
  • Hika Kuroshima

best research papers available sites

Metformin administration is associated with enhanced response to transarterial chemoembolization for hepatocellular carcinoma in type 2 diabetes patients

  • Woo Jin Jung
  • Sangmi Jang
  • Jin-Wook Kim

best research papers available sites

The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence while controlling for genetic differences in cognition and socioeconomic background

  • Bruno Sauce
  • Magnus Liebherr
  • Torkel Klingberg

best research papers available sites

Life tables of annual life expectancy and mortality for companion dogs in the United Kingdom

  • Kendy Tzu-yun Teng
  • Dave C. Brodbelt
  • Dan G. O’Neill

best research papers available sites

Bioarchaeological and palaeogenomic portrait of two Pompeians that died during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD

  • Gabriele Scorrano
  • Serena Viva
  • Fabio Macciardi

best research papers available sites

Reading on a smartphone affects sigh generation, brain activity, and comprehension

  • Motoyasu Honma
  • Yuri Masaoka
  • Masahiko Izumizaki

best research papers available sites

Principal Component Analyses (PCA)-based findings in population genetic studies are highly biased and must be reevaluated

  • Eran Elhaik

best research papers available sites

The determinants of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality across countries

  • Dianna Chang
  • Kelvin Jui Keng Tan

best research papers available sites

Birdsongs alleviate anxiety and paranoia in healthy participants

  • J. Sundermann

best research papers available sites

Identification of ADS024, a newly characterized strain of Bacillus velezensis with direct Clostridiodes difficile killing and toxin degradation bio-activities

  • Michelle M. O’Donnell
  • James W. Hegarty
  • Laurent Chesnel

best research papers available sites

Multiple sclerosis genetic and non-genetic factors interact through the transient transcriptome

  • Renato Umeton
  • Gianmarco Bellucci
  • Giovanni Ristori

best research papers available sites

The effect of metformin on the survival of colorectal cancer patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

  • Zeinab Tarhini
  • Kamelia Manceur
  • Niki Christou

best research papers available sites

Chemical characterisation of the vapour emitted by an e-cigarette using a ceramic wick-based technology

  • M. Isabel Pinto

best research papers available sites

Large-magnitude (VEI ≥ 7) ‘wet’ explosive silicic eruption preserved a Lower Miocene habitat at the Ipolytarnóc Fossil Site, North Hungary

  • Dávid Karátson
  • Imre Szarvas

best research papers available sites

Far-UVC (222 nm) efficiently inactivates an airborne pathogen in a room-sized chamber

  • Waseem Hiwar
  • Kenneth Wood

best research papers available sites

Low dose aspirin associated with greater bone mineral density in older adults

  • Hongzhan Liu
  • Xungang Xiao

best research papers available sites

First direct evidence of adult European eels migrating to their breeding place in the Sargasso Sea

  • Rosalind M. Wright
  • Adam T. Piper
  • David Righton

best research papers available sites

Infections with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant exhibit fourfold increased viral loads in the upper airways compared to Alpha or non-variants of concern

  • Christian J. H. von Wintersdorff
  • Jozef Dingemans
  • Paul H. M. Savelkoul

best research papers available sites

Inappropriate sinus tachycardia in post-COVID-19 syndrome

  • Júlia Aranyó
  • Victor Bazan
  • Roger Villuendas

best research papers available sites

The microstructure and the origin of the Venus from Willendorf

  • Gerhard W. Weber
  • Alexander Lukeneder

best research papers available sites

COVID-19 reinfections among naturally infected and vaccinated individuals

  • Sezanur Rahman
  • M. Mahfuzur Rahman
  • Mustafizur Rahman

best research papers available sites

Lockdown measures during the COVID-19 pandemic strongly impacted the circulation of respiratory pathogens in Southern China

  • Heping Wang
  • Yuejie Zheng
  • Wenjian Wang

best research papers available sites

Alzheimer’s disease large-scale gene expression portrait identifies exercise as the top theoretical treatment

  • Mason A. Hill
  • Stephen C. Gammie

best research papers available sites

COVID-19 symptoms are reduced by targeted hydration of the nose, larynx and trachea

  • Carolin Elizabeth George
  • Gerhard Scheuch
  • David A. Edwards

best research papers available sites

SARS-CoV-2 spike protein induces cognitive deficit and anxiety-like behavior in mouse via non-cell autonomous hippocampal neuronal death

  • Junyoung Oh
  • Woo-Hyun Cho
  • Sung Joong Lee

best research papers available sites

Abdominal pain patterns during COVID-19: an observational study

  • Alexandre Balaphas
  • Kyriaki Gkoufa
  • Christian Toso

best research papers available sites

Detection of human pathogenic bacteria in rectal DNA samples from Zalophus californianus in the Gulf of California, Mexico

  • Francesco Cicala
  • David Ramírez-Delgado
  • Alexei F. Licea-Navarro

best research papers available sites

Industrialised fishing nations largely contribute to floating plastic pollution in the North Pacific subtropical gyre

  • Laurent Lebreton
  • Sarah-Jeanne Royer
  • Matthias Egger

best research papers available sites

Hypertension and diabetes including their earlier stage are associated with increased risk of sudden cardiac arrest

  • Seung Young Roh
  • Young-Hoon Kim

best research papers available sites

Utility of an artificial intelligence system for classification of esophageal lesions when simulating its clinical use

  • Ayaka Tajiri
  • Ryu Ishihara
  • Tomohiro Tada

best research papers available sites

Prevalence, age of decision, and interpersonal warmth judgements of childfree adults

  • Zachary P. Neal
  • Jennifer Watling Neal

best research papers available sites

Acute and protracted abstinence from methamphetamine bidirectionally changes intrinsic excitability of indirect pathway spiny projection neurons in the dorsomedial striatum

  • Sanghoon Choi
  • Steven M. Graves

best research papers available sites

Indeterminacy of cannabis impairment and ∆ 9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (∆ 9 -THC) levels in blood and breath

  • Gregory T. Wurz
  • Michael W. DeGregorio

best research papers available sites

High rates of plasmid cotransformation in E. coli overturn the clonality myth and reveal colony development

  • Delia Tomoiaga
  • Jaclyn Bubnell
  • Paul Feinstein

best research papers available sites

Metformin sensitizes leukemic cells to cytotoxic lymphocytes by increasing expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1)

  • Nerea Allende-Vega
  • Joaquin Marco Brualla
  • Martin Villalba

best research papers available sites

Incorporation of machine learning and deep neural network approaches into a remote sensing-integrated crop model for the simulation of rice growth

  • Seungtaek Jeong
  • Jong-min Yeom

best research papers available sites

Perceiving societal pressure to be happy is linked to poor well-being, especially in happy nations

  • Egon Dejonckheere
  • Joshua J. Rhee
  • Brock Bastian

best research papers available sites

The earliest Pleistocene record of a large-bodied hominin from the Levant supports two out-of-Africa dispersal events

  • Alon Barash
  • Miriam Belmaker

best research papers available sites

Generation mechanism and prediction of an observed extreme rogue wave

  • Johannes Gemmrich

best research papers available sites

Fitness tracking reveals task-specific associations between memory, mental health, and physical activity

  • Jeremy R. Manning
  • Gina M. Notaro
  • Paxton C. Fitzpatrick

Domestic dogs ( Canis familiaris ) grieve over the loss of a conspecific

  • Stefania Uccheddu
  • Lucia Ronconi
  • Federica Pirrone

best research papers available sites

Human transgenerational observations of regular smoking before puberty on fat mass in grandchildren and great-grandchildren

  • Jean Golding
  • Steve Gregory
  • Matthew Suderman

best research papers available sites

Chlamydia pneumoniae can infect the central nervous system via the olfactory and trigeminal nerves and contributes to Alzheimer’s disease risk

  • Jenny A. K. Ekberg

best research papers available sites

Oxycodone/naloxone versus tapentadol in real-world chronic non-cancer pain management: an observational and pharmacogenetic study

  • Jordi Barrachina
  • Cesar Margarit
  • Ana M. Peiró

Cooking methods are associated with inflammatory factors, renal function, and other hormones and nutritional biomarkers in older adults

  • Montserrat Rodríguez-Ayala
  • José Ramón Banegas
  • Pilar Guallar-Castillón

best research papers available sites

Classification of pig calls produced from birth to slaughter according to their emotional valence and context of production

  • Elodie F. Briefer
  • Ciara C.-R. Sypherd
  • Céline Tallet

best research papers available sites

Higher emotional awareness is associated with greater domain-general reflective tendencies

  • Michelle Persich
  • William D. S. Killgore

best research papers available sites

A large Megaraptoridae (Theropoda: Coelurosauria) from Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of Patagonia, Argentina

  • Alexis M. Aranciaga Rolando
  • Matias J. Motta
  • Fernando E. Novas

best research papers available sites

Long COVID occurrence in COVID-19 survivors

  • Aya Sugiyama
  • Junko Tanaka

best research papers available sites

Water activated disposable paper battery

  • Alexandre Poulin
  • Xavier Aeby
  • Gustav Nyström

best research papers available sites

Intestinal preservation in a birdlike dinosaur supports conservatism in digestive canal evolution among theropods

  • Yichuan Liu

best research papers available sites

Antiviral effect of cetylpyridinium chloride in mouthwash on SARS-CoV-2

  • Hirofumi Sawa

best research papers available sites

Evidence of an oceanic impact and megatsunami sedimentation in Chryse Planitia, Mars

  • J. Alexis P. Rodriguez
  • Darrel K. Robertson
  • Mario Zarroca

best research papers available sites

Curcumin and metformin synergistically modulate peripheral and central immune mechanisms of pain

  • Peththa Wadu Dasuni Wasana
  • Pasarapa Towiwat

best research papers available sites

The first occurrence of an avian-style respiratory infection in a non-avian dinosaur

  • D. Cary Woodruff
  • Ewan D. S. Wolff
  • Lawrence M. Witmer

best research papers available sites

Optimal linear estimation models predict 1400–2900 years of overlap between Homo sapiens and Neandertals prior to their disappearance from France and northern Spain

  • Igor Djakovic
  • Alastair Key
  • Marie Soressi

best research papers available sites

The influence of time on the sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 serological testing

  • Arturo Torres Ortiz
  • Fernanda Fenn Torrente
  • Louis Grandjean

best research papers available sites

Online misinformation is linked to early COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy and refusal

  • Francesco Pierri
  • Brea L. Perry
  • John Bryden

best research papers available sites

A distinct symptom pattern emerges for COVID-19 long-haul: a nationwide study

  • Melissa D. Pinto
  • Charles A. Downs
  • Natalie Lambert

best research papers available sites

SARS-CoV-2-reactive IFN-γ-producing CD4 + and CD8 + T cells in blood do not correlate with clinical severity in unvaccinated critically ill COVID-19 patients

  • Beatriz Olea
  • Eliseo Albert
  • David Navarro

best research papers available sites

Classification of 74 facial emoji’s emotional states on the valence-arousal axes

  • Gaku Kutsuzawa
  • Hiroyuki Umemura
  • Yoshiyuki Kobayashi

best research papers available sites

The emergence of a new sex-system (XX/XY 1 Y 2 ) suggests a species complex in the “monotypic” rodent Oecomys auyantepui (Rodentia, Sigmodontinae)

  • Willam Oliveira da Silva
  • Celina Coelho Rosa
  • Cleusa Yoshiko Nagamachi

best research papers available sites

Detection of COVID-19 using multimodal data from a wearable device: results from the first TemPredict Study

  • Ashley E. Mason
  • Frederick M. Hecht
  • Benjamin L. Smarr

best research papers available sites

Spinal degeneration is associated with lumbar multifidus morphology in secondary care patients with low back or leg pain

  • Jeffrey R. Cooley
  • Tue S. Jensen
  • Jeffrey J. Hebert

best research papers available sites

Phenomenology and content of the inhaled N , N -dimethyltryptamine ( N , N -DMT) experience

  • David Wyndham Lawrence
  • Robin Carhart-Harris
  • Christopher Timmermann

best research papers available sites

A gigantic bizarre marine turtle (Testudines: Chelonioidea) from the Middle Campanian (Late Cretaceous) of South-western Europe

  • Oscar Castillo-Visa
  • Àngel H. Luján
  • Albert Sellés

best research papers available sites

The first experience with fully endoscopic posterior cervical foraminotomy and discectomy for radiculopathy performed in Viet Duc University Hospital

  • Son Ngoc Dinh
  • Hung The Dinh

best research papers available sites

Mapping the “catscape” formed by a population of pet cats with outdoor access

  • Richard Bischof
  • Nina Rosita Hansen
  • Torbjørn Haugaasen

best research papers available sites

Investigation of humans individual differences as predictors of their animal interaction styles, focused on the domestic cat

  • Lauren R. Finka
  • Lucia Ripari
  • Marnie L. Brennan

best research papers available sites

Genesis of fecal floatation is causally linked to gut microbial colonization in mice

  • Syed Mohammed Musheer Aalam
  • Daphne Norma Crasta
  • Nagarajan Kannan

best research papers available sites

Young children’s screen time during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 12 countries

  • Christina Bergmann
  • Nevena Dimitrova
  • Nivedita Mani

best research papers available sites

Cichlids and stingrays can add and subtract ‘one’ in the number space from one to five

  • V. Schluessel

best research papers available sites

Elevated estradiol levels in frozen embryo transfer have different effects on pregnancy outcomes depending on the stage of transferred embryos

  • Liming Ruan

best research papers available sites

Group VR experiences can produce ego attenuation and connectedness comparable to psychedelics

  • David R. Glowacki
  • Rhoslyn Roebuck Williams
  • Mike Chatziapostolou

best research papers available sites

New therizinosaurid dinosaur from the marine Osoushinai Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Japan) provides insight for function and evolution of therizinosaur claws

  • Yoshitsugu Kobayashi
  • Ryuji Takasaki
  • Yoshinori Hikida

best research papers available sites

Smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment reveals mental health benefits of birdlife

  • Ryan Hammoud
  • Stefania Tognin
  • Andrea Mechelli

best research papers available sites

Long-term outcomes of cataract surgery with toric intraocular lens implantation by the type of preoperative astigmatism

  • Tetsuro Oshika
  • Shinichiro Nakano
  • Tsutomu Kaneko

best research papers available sites

Forest fire detection system using wireless sensor networks and machine learning

  • Udaya Dampage
  • Lumini Bandaranayake
  • Bathiya Jayasanka

best research papers available sites

Misinformation of COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine hesitancy

  • Sun Kyong Lee
  • Juhyung Sun
  • Shane Connelly

best research papers available sites

Deep language algorithms predict semantic comprehension from brain activity

  • Charlotte Caucheteux
  • Alexandre Gramfort
  • Jean-Rémi King

best research papers available sites

Children with autism spectrum disorder show atypical electroencephalographic response to processing contextual incongruencies

  • Amparo V. Márquez-García
  • Vasily A. Vakorin
  • Sam M. Doesburg

best research papers available sites

A generalizable one health framework for the control of zoonotic diseases

  • Ria R. Ghai
  • Ryan M. Wallace
  • Casey Barton Behravesh

best research papers available sites

HS3ST2 expression induces the cell autonomous aggregation of tau

  • M. B. Huynh
  • N. Rebergue
  • D. Papy-Garcia

best research papers available sites

Exceptional warming over the Barents area

  • Ketil Isaksen
  • Øyvind Nordli
  • Tatiana Karandasheva

best research papers available sites

A new Early Cretaceous lizard in Myanmar amber with exceptionally preserved integument

  • Andrej Čerňanský
  • Edward L. Stanley
  • Susan E. Evans

best research papers available sites

Coffee consumption and diabetic retinopathy in adults with diabetes mellitus

  • Hak Jun Lee
  • Daniel Duck-Jin Hwang

best research papers available sites

Shifts in the foraging tactics of crocodiles following invasion by toxic prey

  • Abhilasha Aiyer
  • Richard Shine
  • Georgia Ward-Fear

best research papers available sites

Production of high loading insulin nanoparticles suitable for oral delivery by spray drying and freeze drying techniques

  • Alberto Baldelli
  • Anubhav Pratap-Singh

best research papers available sites

Cable news and COVID-19 vaccine uptake

  • Matteo Pinna
  • Christoph Goessmann

best research papers available sites

Estimating the time of last drinking from blood ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulphate concentrations

  • Zhongyuan Guo

best research papers available sites

COVID-19 infections in infants

  • Małgorzata Sobolewska-Pilarczyk
  • Maria Pokorska-Śpiewak
  • Małgorzata Pawłowska

best research papers available sites

COVID-19 increases the risk for the onset of atrial fibrillation in hospitalized patients

  • Jakob Wollborn
  • Sergey Karamnov
  • Jochen D. Muehlschlegel

best research papers available sites

Childhood temperament and adulthood personality differentially predict life outcomes

  • Amanda J. Wright
  • Joshua J. Jackson

best research papers available sites

Antivirus applied to JAR malware detection based on runtime behaviors

  • Ricardo P. Pinheiro
  • Sidney M. L. Lima
  • Wellington P. dos Santos

best research papers available sites

Therapeutic enzyme engineering using a generative neural network

  • Andrew Giessel
  • Athanasios Dousis
  • Stuart Licht

best research papers available sites

Identification of genes associated with human-canine communication in canine evolution

  • Akiko Tonoike
  • Ken-ichi Otaki
  • Miho Nagasawa

best research papers available sites

Breath chemical markers of sexual arousal in humans

  • G. Pugliese
  • J. Williams

best research papers available sites

A 5-km-thick reservoir with > 380,000 km 3 of magma within the ancient Earth's crust

  • Rais Latypov
  • Sofya Chistyakova
  • Mauritz van der Merwe

best research papers available sites

Return of large fin whale feeding aggregations to historical whaling grounds in the Southern Ocean

  • Helena Herr
  • Sacha Viquerat
  • Bettina Meyer

Quick links

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best research papers available sites

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COMMENTS

  1. The best academic search engines [Update 2024]

    Get 30 days free. 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.

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    11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers. #6. CORE. 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.

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    Organize your papers in one place. Try Paperpile. 1. Scopus. Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Besides searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator. 2.

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    Harness the power of visual materials—explore more than 3 million images now on JSTOR. Enhance your scholarly research with underground newspapers, magazines, and journals. Take your research further with Artstor's 3+ million images. Explore collections in the arts, sciences, and literature from the world's leading museums, archives, and ...

  5. How to Find Research Papers Effectively: 25 Best Academic Websites

    1. Google Scholar - The Ultimate Academic Search Engine. Google Scholar is a free-to-use search engine that indexes scholarly articles and other academic materials across disciplines. Users can access a wide range of research papers, articles, theses, and books through Google Scholar.

  6. Search

    Find the research you need | With 160+ million publication pages, 1+ million questions, and 25+ million researchers, this is where everyone can access science

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    3. Library of Congress. As the largest library in the world, the Library of Congress is an amazing online resource for academic research. Students can search its collections to access digital resources, videos, audio recordings, photographs, and maps. The library's materials also include notated music, web archives, legislation, and 3D objects.

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    2. Google Scholar. Google Scholar. Google Scholar is undoubtedly one of the popular search engines. With its vast database of scholarly literature, Google Scholar allows users to search for articles, theses, books, and conference papers across multiple academic disciplines.

  9. 10 Free Research and Journal Databases

    More than half of these are available for free, either directly via EThOS or via a link to a university website. 7. Social Science Research Network (SSRN) SSRN is a database for research from the social sciences and humanities, including 846,589 research papers from 426,107 researchers across 30 disciplines. Most of these are available for free ...

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    Grammarly. Grammarly is a real-time writing tool that checks spelling, punctuation, and style. It was created in 2009 by linguists and software engineers and is now one of the most popular writing tools. Grammarly is available as a browser extension, a desktop program for Windows and macOS, and a web app.

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    It is a highly interdisciplinary platform used to search for scholarly articles related to 67 social science topics. SSRN has a variety of research networks for the various topics available through the free scholarly database. The site offers more than 700,000 abstracts and more than 600,000 full-text papers.

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    Academic search engine for students and researchers. Locates relevant academic search results from web pages, books, encyclopedias, and journals.

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    Explore our top research interests Browse All Topics. History. 10.4 M. Followers. 811 K. Papers. 349 K. Authors. Medieval History. 92.3 K papers. Ancient History. 87.1 K papers. ... Download groups of related papers to jumpstart your research. Save time with detailed summaries and search alerts. Advanced Search; PDF Packages of 37 papers;

  16. The 10 Best Essential Resources for Academic Research

    2. Library of Congress (LOC) As the largest library in the world, it houses millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts. Its extensive digital collections make it one of the best websites for academic research, especially for those in humanities and social sciences. The LOC's online catalog and digital ...

  17. Journal Top 100

    Journal Top 100 This collection highlights our most downloaded* research papers published in 2020. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers showcase valuable research from an ...

  18. The Best Research and Reference Websites

    ReferenceDesk.org: Dubbed "The Internet's Best Reference Source," this extremely useful web directory provides everything from business and finance information to federal government resources, scholarship details, links to newspapers and calendars, search engines, and more. Ask the Space Expert: NASA's source for space and science research help.

  19. List of academic databases and search engines

    The main academic full-text databases are open archives or link-resolution services, although others operate under different models such as mirroring or hybrid publishers. Such services typically provide access to full text and full-text search, but also metadata about items for which no full text is available.. This list focuses on general-purpose services; OpenDOAR can be used to find ...

  20. Research articles

    Comparison of clustering and phenotyping approaches for subclassification of type 2 diabetes and its association with remission in Indian population. Pramod Tripathi. Anagha Vyawahare. Maheshkumar ...

  21. Journal Top 100

    Journal Top 100 This collection highlights our most downloaded* research papers published in 2021. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an ...

  22. 7 Best Websites for Accessing Online Research Journals and Papers

    2. Academia.edu. Academia is one of the most trusted websites for research papers in all areas of study. With over four and a half million users, it basically works as a social media platform for researchers just like Facebook. Primarily used to share the papers for free, it is considered one of the most popular websites for publishing them too ...

  23. 12 Best Tools For Perfect Research Summary Writing

    6. Scribbr: The Research Paper Assistant . Scribbr is an AI-driven academic writing assistant with a summarization feature tailored for research papers. The tool assists users in the research paper writing process by summarizing and condensing information from various sources, offering support in structuring and organizing content effectively. 7.

  24. Journal Top 100

    Journal Top 100 - 2022. This collection highlights our most downloaded* research papers published in 2022. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an ...