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24 Best Databases For Research: A Comprehensive List For Students

From academic journals to professional publications, this list covers the best databases for research. Start your search for valuable information.

Apr 5, 2024

Research is the driving force behind the innovation and progress that defines every field of study. In the digital age, this pursuit has been significantly diversified, with multiple avenues available for exploration. The most reliable sources of information are databases designed to deliver accurate and updated information on a wide range of subjects. In this blog, we delve into the world of database research and bring to light the best databases for research, delving into the difference between primary vs secondary sources .

Table of Contents

How to evaluate a research database, benefits of using academic and professional databases for research, how to find peer-reviewed articles, common research mistakes to avoid, supercharge your researching ability with otio — try otio for free today.

Research databases are like treasure troves, offering a wealth of scholarly materials such as journal articles, conference papers, books, and more. Each database is meticulously curated and organized, making them invaluable tools for researchers. These databases are segmented to facilitate research across specific disciplines by focusing on distinct fields or fostering research that transcends multiple domains. 

They are akin to libraries designed to cater to the nuanced demands of the academic community, providing a structured digital environment where researchers can delve into a curated assortment of resources that are both focused and wide-ranging.

Criteria for Evaluating Research Databases

Coverage and scope.

When determining the credibility and reliability of research databases, one must first assess their coverage and scope. A database's value is contingent on its ability to index a broad array of scholarly literature—from peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings to academic books and other relevant sources. The broader the scope and coverage, the more likely researchers are to find a comprehensive array of material that aligns with their field of interest.

Content Quality

Another essential factor in evaluating a research database is the quality of its content. Key considerations include the reputation of the journals and publishers contained in the database, the stringency of the peer-review process, and the credibility of the authors and institutions involved. Quality control is essential when ensuring that the content within a research database is trustworthy and academically sound.

Search Features and Functionality

The search features and functionality of a database are vital for researchers who rely on it to find relevant information. The capacity to refine search queries using filters for publication date, document type, or subject category is crucial. The user interface, accessibility of search results, and general ease of navigation are pivotal features that contribute to the overall usability and effectiveness of a research database.

Peer Review

A significant mark of a reputable research database is its inclusion of peer-reviewed journals and publications. Articles that have undergone rigorous scrutiny by domain experts are inherently more trustworthy and credible. Prioritizing peer-reviewed content ensures that researchers have access to information that is both authoritative and accurate, ultimately enhancing the quality of their research endeavors.

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Reliable Resources

When conducting research, it is crucial to use reliable resources that provide accurate and trustworthy information. Research databases are excellent sources of information because they contain articles, studies, and other resources written by professionals within specific fields. These sources undergo a rigorous editorial process and are peer-reviewed, ensuring their accuracy and reliability. 

This level of quality is far superior to information found through regular search engines, where results can be manipulated and sources can lack credibility. By utilizing research databases, researchers can access materials that are not only verified but also written by experts in the field. This ensures that the information is current, accurate, and trustworthy, helping researchers find the support they need for their work.

One of the key benefits of using research databases is the availability of accurate citations. Research databases include citations for any information sourced from other works, providing a clear trail of references that can be useful for further research. These sources usually come with a citation that can be directly used to reference the material in a research paper or presentation. 

This feature helps save time by providing an accurate citation for the source used in research work and ensures that authors give credit to the original work. By including citations, research databases facilitate the proper acknowledgment of sources and give authors confidence in the accuracy and authenticity of their work.

Accessibility

Research databases offer easy access to a range of peer-reviewed, scholarly sources, making it simple for professionals to find reliable materials for their research. These databases often contain a wide variety of content, including academic journals, articles, reports, and more, allowing researchers to explore a wealth of resources relevant to their field of study. 

Peer-reviewed sources are valued in academic and professional circles because they undergo a rigorous evaluation process by experts in the same field. This evaluation ensures the accuracy, credibility, and quality of the content, making it a valuable resource for researchers. Access to these resources is essential for researchers to stay informed about the latest developments, trends, and findings within their area of interest.

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PubMed is a free search engine operated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), focusing primarily on biomedical literature. It includes millions of citations and abstracts from biomedical literature, comprising life science journals, online books, and articles.

JSTOR is a digital library that offers access to thousands of academic journals, books, and primary sources across various disciplines, such as humanities, social sciences, and sciences. It is valuable for historical research due to its full-text access to older journal issues.

Scopus is a comprehensive abstract and citation database that covers a wide range of disciplines. It includes peer-reviewed literature like journals, conference proceedings, and patents. Scopus provides advanced search and analysis tools for researchers.

4. Web of Science

Developed by Clarivate Analytics, Web of Science is a multidisciplinary citation database covering scholarly literature from various fields. It indexes high-impact journals and offers citation metrics to assess research impact and track scholarly trends.

5. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes scholarly literature across different disciplines. It includes articles, theses, books, and conference papers sourced from academic publishers, professional societies, universities, and more.

6. IEEE Xplore

IEEE Xplore is a digital library that offers access to research literature in engineering, technology, and related fields. It features journals, conference proceedings, standards, and eBooks published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and its partners.

7. PsycINFO

PsycINFO is a bibliographic database maintained by the American Psychological Association (APA). It covers psychology and related disciplines, including psychiatry, sociology, education, and anthropology. PsycINFO indexes journal articles, books, chapters, and dissertations.

8. ScienceDirect

ScienceDirect is an online platform operated by Elsevier, providing access to a vast collection of scientific and technical research literature. It hosts journals, books, and reference works across various fields like physical sciences, life sciences, health sciences, and social sciences.

9. SpringerLink

SpringerLink is a digital platform offering access to scientific, technical, and medical content published by Springer Nature. It includes journals, books, conference proceedings, and reference works in numerous disciplines, including natural sciences, computer science, and medicine.

10. BioMed Central

BioMed Central (BMC) is a publisher of open-access, peer-reviewed journals in the fields of biology, medicine, and biomedicine. It offers free access to research articles, reviews, and other content, promoting transparency and accessibility in scientific publishing.

11. PubMed Central

PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository maintained by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It archives full-text scholarly articles from biomedical and life science journals, ensuring long-term preservation and accessibility to research literature.

Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is an online digital library of education research and information. It provides access to articles, research reports, conference papers, and other resources related to various aspects of education, including teaching, learning, and policy.

13. ProQuest

ProQuest is a multidisciplinary research database that offers access to scholarly journals, newspapers, dissertations, and other publications. It covers a wide range of subjects, including arts, business, health, science, and social sciences, providing valuable resources for researchers.

14. EconLit

EconLit is a database maintained by the American Economic Association, focusing on economics literature. It includes journal articles, books, working papers, and more, covering topics such as economic theory, labor economics, international economics, and economic development.

Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) is a comprehensive database of nursing and allied health literature. It includes journal articles, books, dissertations, standards, and more, helping healthcare professionals access relevant research in their fields.

16. PsycARTICLES

PsycARTICLES is a database offering full-text articles from journals published by the APA and allied organizations. It covers a wide range of psychology topics, providing access to research articles, reviews, and other content for professionals and researchers in the field.

17. EconBiz

EconBiz is a research tool for economics and business studies, offering access to academic literature, journals, working papers, and other resources in the field. It covers topics such as economic policy, finance, management, and more, providing valuable information for researchers.

18. IEEE Computer Society Digital Library

The IEEE Computer Society Digital Library is a platform providing access to research literature related to computer science and technology. It includes journals, conference proceedings, and standards published by the IEEE Computer Society, offering valuable resources for researchers in the field.

19. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems

IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems is a journal focusing on the emerging areas of neural networks and learning systems. It covers research articles, reviews, and applications related to neural networks, deep learning, machine learning, and other related topics.

20. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence is a journal that publishes research articles, reviews, and applications related to pattern analysis, machine learning, computer vision, and related topics. It offers valuable resources for researchers working in these areas.

21. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology

IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology is a journal focusing on research articles, reviews, and applications related to control systems technology. It covers topics such as adaptive control, process control, robotics, and more, providing valuable resources for researchers in the field.

22. Agricola

Agricola is a database maintained by the National Agricultural Library, offering access to agricultural literature and resources. It includes journal articles, books, theses, patents, and more, covering topics such as agriculture, forestry, food, and nutrition, providing valuable information for researchers in the field.

23. Business Source Complete

Business Source Complete is a comprehensive business research database offering access to scholarly journals, trade publications, industry reports, and more. It covers various business disciplines, including marketing, management, finance, and economics, providing valuable resources for researchers and professionals in the field.

24. Sociological Abstracts

Sociological Abstracts is a database providing access to literature in the field of sociology and related disciplines. It includes journal articles, books, conference papers, and other resources, covering topics such as social behavior , culture, social structure, and more, offering valuable information for researchers in the field. Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner — try Otio for free today!

• How To Tell If An Article Is Peer Reviewed • Reliable Sources For Research • Literature Search • How To Summarize A Research Article • Summarize Research Paper Ai • Using Ai For Research • How To Use Chat Gpt For Research • How To Search For Research Articles

Peer-reviewed articles are the cornerstone of credible research. The internet is flooded with articles, journals, and books, some of which lack credibility . Peer-reviewed articles have undergone scrutiny by industry experts and scholars, making them trustworthy sources for research.

Factors to Consider When Finding Peer-Reviewed Articles 

Check the author.

Peer-reviewed articles are crafted by experts in a specific field, ensuring that the research is credible. This rigid evaluation process requires authors to have industry expertise relevant to their research. When assessing an article, verify the author's credentials to guarantee their expertise.

Choose a Database

Select a reputable academic database or search engine that indexes peer-reviewed literature in your area of interest. This ensures that your research findings are credible and reliable.

Define Your Search Query

Clearly define your research topic or question to guide your search. Identify relevant keywords, phrases, and concepts, and consider utilizing Boolean operators to combine or exclude search terms for more precise results.

Use Advanced Search Features

Leverage advanced search features provided by the database to refine your search results. Filters for publication date, document type, author affiliation, and journal title can help narrow down the most relevant articles for your research.

Select Peer-Reviewed or Scholarly Journals

Look for options to restrict your search results to peer-reviewed or scholarly journals. This filter guarantees that the articles you find have undergone a rigorous review process by industry experts.

Check Journal Information

Ensure that the journal publishing the article is peer-reviewed or scholarly. Review the journal’s editorial board, review process, and publication standards on the publisher’s website to verify its credibility.

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Otio streamlines the research process and accelerates the transition from reading lists to first drafts. Researchers can benefit from Otio’s AI-generated notes on all bookmarks, a chat feature for individual links or entire knowledge bases, and AI-assisted writing, making the research and writing experience seamless and efficient.

Sticking to One Source

When conducting research, it's important to explore various angles and perspectives on your topic. Relying on a single source may limit the depth and breadth of information you can gather and present in your work.

Not Documenting Every Fact

Failing to document each piece of information as you conduct your research can lead to a lot of extra work when it comes time to write your paper or article. Be sure to keep thorough notes and properly attribute all information to its original source.

Using Outdated Materials

Academic disciplines are constantly evolving, and new research may have surfaced since older articles were published. Ensure your research is current by incorporating the latest studies and findings in your work.

Relying Solely on Open Access Journals

While Open Access journals provide a wealth of free articles, don't discount paid content . Exploring a variety of sources, both free and paid, can enrich your research and provide a more comprehensive understanding of your topic.

Digging Too Deep or Not Deep Enough

Finding the right balance in the depth of your research is crucial. Conducting searches that are too broad may yield vague results, while overly specific searches could lead to irrelevant information. Aim for a concise yet thorough exploration of your research question.

Knowledge workers, researchers, and students today suffer from content overload and use fragmented, complex, and manual tools to get through their workflows. Many settle for stitching together complicated bookmarking, read-it-later, and note-taking apps. Now, with anyone able to create content with a click, the problem is only getting worse. Otio is solving this issue by providing an AI-native workspace for researchers. 

Efficient Knowledge Collection and Note-Taking 

This platform helps users to collect from a wide range of data sources, including bookmarks, tweets, extensive books, and YouTube videos. Users can extract key takeaways with detailed AI-generated notes and source-grounded Q&A chat. Otio helps create draft outputs using collected sources, assisting users in progressing from reading lists to first drafts more efficiently. 

Streamlining Research and Writing Processes with Otio's AI Assistance

Otio also aids in faster research paper and essay writing. Key features that researchers love include AI-generated notes on all bookmarks (YouTube videos, PDFs, articles, etc.), individual link or entire knowledge base chat like ChatGPT, and AI-assisted writing. 

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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.

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.

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

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

Advanced Search Options : No

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.

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.

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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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!

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.

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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EBSCO Open Dissertations

EBSCO Open Dissertations is a collaboration between EBSCO and BiblioLabs to increase traffic and discoverability of ETD research. You can join the movement and add your theses and dissertations to the database, making them freely available to researchers everywhere.

GreenFILE is a free research database covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. 

Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts

Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) is a free research database for library and information science studies. LISTA provides indexing and abstracting for hundreds of key journals, books, research reports. It is EBSCO's intention to provide access to this resource on a continual basis.

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A complimentary research database for teachers,  Teacher Reference Center  (TRC) provides indexing and abstracts for more than 230 peer-reviewed journals.

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European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 is a free archive of indexed publications related to the Americas and written in Europe before 1750. It includes thousands of valuable primary source records covering the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of Native American peoples.

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Need articles for your library research project, but not sure where to start? We recommend these top ten article databases for kicking off your research. If you can't find what you need searching in one of these top ten databases, browse the list of all library databases by subject (academic discipline) or title .

• U-M Library Articles Search This link opens in a new window Use Articles Search to locate scholarly and popular articles, as well as reference works and materials from open access archives.
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LITERATURE REVIEW SOFTWARE FOR BETTER RESEARCH

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As a person who is an early researcher and identifies as dyslexic, I can say that having research articles laid out in the date vs cite graph format is much more approachable than looking at a standard database interface. I feel that the maps Litmaps offers lower the barrier of entry for researchers by giving them the connections between articles spaced out visually. This helps me orientate where a paper is in the history of a field. Thus, new researchers can look at one of Litmap's "seed maps" and have the same information as hours of digging through a database.

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• Citable Docs. (3years)
• Total Cites (3years)

-->

	Title	Type
1		journal	106.094 Q1	211	49	124	4844	35427	89	381.89	98.86	43.95
2		journal	37.044 Q1	39	3	13	897	955	13	100.11	299.00	27.78
3		journal	35.910 Q1	508	123	336	11462	13599	153	34.50	93.19	29.41
4		journal	30.448 Q1	306	47	136	3645	2240	136	11.14	77.55	26.67
5		journal	26.837 Q1	505	105	304	10805	10951	163	31.23	102.90	44.33
6		journal	24.342 Q1	892	439	1496	32820	53447	1207	31.30	74.76	40.19
7		journal	22.399 Q1	391	239	731	8584	13091	153	19.72	35.92	34.15
8		journal	22.344 Q1	359	95	353	6242	4811	351	10.33	65.71	23.89
9		journal	21.836 Q1	184	117	335	8842	13775	196	31.17	75.57	26.86
10		journal	21.048 Q1	217	127	400	9888	10807	183	28.36	77.86	38.85
11		journal	20.544 Q1	1184	1388	4522	14603	107246	1824	21.69	10.52	38.26
12		journal	19.139 Q1	352	83	227	5043	1938	221	7.00	60.76	16.91
13		journal	19.045 Q1	630	595	1363	16478	36243	729	27.23	27.69	43.99
14		journal	18.663 Q1	71	0	19	0	963	19	0.00	0.00	0.00
15		journal	18.587 Q1	23	11	16	0	802	16	47.57	0.00	81.69
16		journal	18.530 Q1	215	83	261	4493	2531	258	7.04	54.13	17.80
17		journal	18.509 Q1	1391	3770	8037	74917	160102	3840	19.40	19.87	38.12
18		journal	18.117 Q1	511	485	1066	13393	17008	461	13.24	27.61	35.19
19		journal	17.828 Q1	833	271	851	115878	50519	819	49.76	427.59	30.50
20		journal	17.701 Q1	223	75	273	3371	1946	268	6.24	44.95	13.84
21		journal	17.654 Q1	234	108	410	6448	4495	409	8.04	59.70	16.43
22		journal	17.507 Q1	398	178	590	11546	12604	360	19.83	64.87	41.91
23		journal	17.497 Q1	229	229	609	6629	16808	379	26.18	28.95	29.53
24		journal	17.300 Q1	639	336	654	13672	13100	504	19.88	40.69	37.01
25		journal	16.061 Q1	388	36	103	14097	4303	99	42.66	391.58	14.94
26		journal	16.009 Q1	467	169	540	11148	13815	304	23.17	65.96	36.44
27		journal	15.966 Q1	264	102	252	19168	11266	244	38.64	187.92	24.30
28		journal	15.827 Q1	140	106	297	4359	4041	62	12.99	41.12	41.35
29		journal	15.620 Q1	328	23	84	4178	2696	83	27.02	181.65	40.68
30		journal	14.943 Q1	115	16	42	403	896	41	24.10	25.19	77.78
31		journal	14.796 Q1	388	400	978	11477	15900	588	17.52	28.69	33.83
32		journal	14.780 Q1	123	0	13	0	374	11	12.56	0.00	0.00
33		journal	14.707 Q1	32	46	35	4815	2160	34	61.71	104.67	36.44
34		journal	14.618 Q1	160	70	247	587	5353	230	21.11	8.39	58.79
35		journal	14.605 Q1	109	23	72	5797	1938	70	14.90	252.04	45.57
36		journal	14.577 Q1	419	262	637	10044	17562	466	27.42	38.34	28.93
37		journal	14.293 Q1	421	123	346	10202	6211	207	17.40	82.94	32.86
38		journal	14.231 Q1	558	306	834	9499	20730	593	24.08	31.04	24.85
39		journal	14.175 Q1	210	28	92	3163	1260	86	10.59	112.96	42.59
40		journal	13.942 Q1	294	144	670	5180	12698	362	18.81	35.97	39.02
41		book series	13.670 Q1	210	14	42	3772	1271	39	23.96	269.43	26.09
42		journal	13.655 Q1	311	89	563	4857	6315	559	11.14	54.57	23.11
43		journal	13.609 Q1	165	93	250	5332	1699	250	6.02	57.33	15.88
44		journal	13.578 Q1	455	233	688	15608	13409	550	16.89	66.99	40.35
45		journal	13.315 Q1	136	180	471	6682	12109	368	24.27	37.12	26.28
46		journal	13.080 Q1	260	243	827	1865	14374	679	16.58	7.67	62.53
47		journal	12.511 Q1	635	252	983	61439	44032	979	38.71	243.81	32.40
48		journal	12.324 Q1	81	55	137	2838	862	137	6.20	51.60	17.36
49		journal	12.294 Q1	46	62	154	8174	4174	86	27.10	131.84	31.14
50		journal	12.288 Q1	44	60	79	4858	3323	78	42.06	80.97	33.06

Follow us on @ScimagoJR Scimago Lab , Copyright 2007-2024. Data Source: Scopus®

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• My.SiebelSchool

CS students received the Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award

8/7/2024 Bruce Adams

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Illinois CS students and faculty, with their collaborators, received the Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award at the 18th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI ‘24). OSDI, the premier conference on computer systems research, selects three best papers each year after a double-blind review. The paper presents a framework called Anvil for building formally verified cluster management controllers.

Written by Bruce Adams

Illinois CS students and faculty, together with their collaborators, received the Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award at the 18th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI ‘24). OSDI, the premier conference on computer systems research, selects three best papers each year after a double-blind review.

The paper, titled “ Anvil: Verifying Liveness of Cluster Management Controllers ,” presents a framework called Anvil for building formally verified cluster management controllers. It is the first tool to apply formal verification to the problem of controller correctness, with a general specification called Eventually Stable Reconciliation (ESR), written as a concise temporal logic liveness property. With Anvil, developers can write controller implementations in Rust and verify that the controllers correctly implement ESR. Anvil also supports the verification of safety properties. The team used Anvil to verify three Kubernetes controllers, which can readily be deployed in Kubernetes platforms and are comparable in terms of features and performance to widely used unverified controllers.

The project is led by Xudong Sun , a fifth-year PhD student at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, working with Wenjie Ma (a visiting undergraduate student at Illinois, Jiawei Tyler Gu (CS PhD student), and Zicheng Ma (an undergraduate student from ZJUI participating in CS Summer Research Program ), and CS professor Tianyin Xu , in collaboration with Tej Chajed from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jon Howell, Andrea Lattuada, Oded Padon and Adriana Szekeres from VMware Research, and Lalith Suresh from Feldera.

Sun presented the paper in July at OSDI in Santa Clara, CA, and the work was very well received. Mooly Sagiv, the Chair of Software Systems at Tel Aviv University and a Fellow of the ACM, called the paper “A major achievement for formal verification.” Dominik Tornow, the author of “Think Distributed Systems,” wrote, “Brilliant work and fantastic paper.” The team has been invited to seminars and workshops at Google, Microsoft, and VMware.

“It is very challenging to build provably correct software systems that are practical and readily deployable in real-world cloud/datacenter infrastructures.” says Xu, “The research is very interdisciplinary across computer systems and formal methods.”

Sun attributes the success to the “dream team” he has been working with and learning from. The team represents people from industrial research and academia, with experts in cluster management, distributed computing theory and practice, programming languages, formal verification theory and practice, testing, and systems reliability.

Suresh, CEO and Co-founder of Feldera, and a core member of the project, said, “Practical systems verification is a lofty goal, and you need a highly interdisciplinary team like this one to push the frontier.”

The paper is the result of Sun’s continuous research on testing and verification of cloud infrastructure systems over the past four years. Before Anvil, he had developed the successful testing tools Sieve and Acto , which found hundreds of serious bugs in critical infrastructure code that led to system outages, data loss, and security vulnerabilities. The recent outages caused by bugs in a CrowdStrike security update affected people worldwide and are as vivid an example as needed to demonstrate how minor errors in coding can have serious consequences.

“We are very successful in finding important bugs by testing, but I hope to go one step further – proving that there are no more bugs in these critical systems.” Sun states, “Our vision is to build provably correct cloud infrastructures through formal verification.”

Anvil is only the first step towards Sun’s ambitious research vision. The team will continue to push the boundaries towards probably correct and practical cloud/data center infrastructures.

Sun is entering his final year as a PhD student at Illinois. He plans to find a faculty job and continue this exciting research. As a  Mavis Future Faculty Fellow , he is well prepared.

“Xudong is exceptional and is among the best junior researchers I have worked with in my career,” says Xu. “He always targets deep, fundamental problems, thinks deeply and critically, and knows how to work with and learn from his colleagues and team members. I have no doubt that he will be a fantastic professor in the near future.”

Lalith Suresh, CEO/Co-founder at Feldera, tweeted that “The star of the show was Xudong Sun, the lead PhD student on the project, who had to work at the intersection of ALL those areas above! He is absolutely *fearless*, one of the key marker traits of a successful systems researcher. Xudong will be on the academic and industrial research job market this year -- if you're on a hiring committee, you'd be foolish not to hire him.”

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This story was published August 7, 2024.

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• 01 August 2024

These AI firms publish the world’s most highly cited work

• Elizabeth Gibney

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Google’s parent company Alphabet has published the world’s most highly cited papers in AI. Credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty

US tech giants Alphabet and Microsoft produce more highly cited research papers on artificial intelligence (AI) than any other company — but Chinese firms Baidu and Tencent are ahead on patents.

That’s according to PARAT , the Private-sector AI-Related Activity Tracker, a tool run by the Emerging Technology Observatory (ETO). The tool gathers data on AI trends and has received a major update.

PARAT’s update includes data on the number of AI jobs at companies, as well as publication and patent outputs. AI research and its products — in particular generative models that create text and images — have become big business. Governments are working out how to regulate the technology as it disrupts industries and raises safety questions .

How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models

In a field where cutting-edge research happens as much in industry as it does in universities, monitoring commercial activity is important, says Ngor Luong, who tracks AI investment and corporate activities at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a think tank focusing on AI at Georgetown University in Washington DC, which hosts the ETO. Companies are at the forefront of innovation in AI, she says.

International expertise

The data show that large Chinese firms are very competitive in AI, including when adjusting for the quality of the work produced, says Zachary Arnold, lead analyst at the observatory. Three Chinese tech giants — Tencent, Alibaba and Huawei — feature in the top ten when companies are sorted by the number of highly cited AI papers and preprints (see ‘AI giants’). “There’s still a bias here in DC, and probably elsewhere, that China is big and can produce a lot, but it’s not really in the top tier,” says Arnold. However, the ETO calculates multiple quality-adjusted metrics and Chinese companies are “putting up impressive numbers” for these, he says.

Source: PARAT/ETO

The most cited paper in all AI research, according to PARAT data, is a 2017 paper 1 entitled ‘ Attention is all you need ’. The work is by US-based researchers at Alphabet subsidiary Google and is famous for describing the ‘transformer’ architecture that now underlies many generative AI models. One highly cited example including authors from China is a paper 2 called ‘ ICNet for Real-Time Semantic Segmentation on High-Resolution Images ’, co-authored by researchers at Tencent, which describes an improved method for identifying objects in images.

US firms account for just three of the ten companies that have filed the most AI patents over the past decade — the rest are in China, Germany and South Korea. The Chinese government has long incentivized patenting, but in the past few years there has been a drive against doing so gratuitously, adds Luong.

Top employers

The data also highlight the diversity of the sector, says Arnold. There is a long tail of firms well beyond the ‘big five’ companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft. And when ranked by highly cited AI research, famous names such as OpenAI and Apple appear alongside companies less known for their AI innovation, such as Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi and US entertainment firm Disney. Luong points out that PARAT’s paper and patent data go up to only the end of 2023, so they miss recent developments.

Other metrics reveal sometimes overlooked AI activity, says Arnold. PARAT now includes figures on the number of AI jobs at a company, a metric based on data from the social-media platform LinkedIn, which are most accurate for US firms. It reveals companies with “a critical mass of talent in AI”, he says. Amazon tops the table by this measure with 14,000 jobs, but is closely followed by multinational consulting firm Accenture. Large consulting companies now act as ‘guns for hire’ for AI projects at other firms and in government, says Arnold.

It is important to be able to examine companies’ activities through a variety of lenses, he adds. “We saw a lot of discussion around ‘who’s ahead in AI?’ We’re data nerds and we know there’s many different types of data you can use to answer that question, and it doesn’t always point in exactly the same direction.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02515-1

Vaswani, A. et al. Proc. 31st Int. Conf. Neural Inf. Proc. Sys . 6000–6010 (2017).

Zhao, H., Qi, X., Shen, X., Shi, J. & Jia, J. In Computer Vision — ECCV 2018 (eds Ferrari, V., Hebert, M., Sminchisescu, C. & Weiss, Y.) Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol. 11207, 418–434 (Springer, 2018).

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ACM Digital Library is the clear number one when it comes to academic databases for computer science. The ACM Full-Text Collection currently has 540,000+ articles, while the ACM Guide to Computing Literature holds more than 2.8+ million bibliographic entries.

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IEEE Xplore holds more than 4.7 million research articles from the fields of electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics. It not only covers articles published in scholarly journals, but also conference papers, technical standards, as well as some books.

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Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science is the number one publishing source for conference proceedings covering all areas of computer science.

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Hosted at the University of Trier, Germany, dbpl has become an indispensable resource in the field of computer science. It's index covers journal articles, conference and workshop proceedings, as well as monographs.

Microsoft Academic was a free academic search engine developed by Microsoft Research. It had more than 13.9 million articles indexed. It was shut down in 2022.

EEE Xplore holds more than 4.7 million research articles from the fields of electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics. It not only covers articles published in scholarly journals, but also conference papers, technical standards, as well as some books.