Academic databases and search engines

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page contains a partial list of representative major databases and search engines useful in an academic setting for finding and accessing articles in academic journals, or in repositories, archives, or other collections of scientific and other articles. As the distinction between a database and a search engines, is unclear for these complex document retrieval systems,

See the general List of search engines, for all-purpose search engines that can be used for academic purposes.

See bibliographic databases for information about databases giving bibliographic information about finding books and journal articles,
See full-text databases for information about those giving directly the full text of articles,
See academic databases for those with other contents, such as chemicals, DNA sequences, or art objects.

Note that "free" or "subscription" can refer both to the availability of the database or of the journal articles included. This has been indicated as precisely as possible in the lists below, which are current as of October, 2006.

1 General
2 Publisher or platform-specific
3 Open Access Journals
4 Specific subjects
5 See also

[edit] General

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts [1] (subscription-based database aggregator)
EBSCO/EPNET [2] (subscription index to subscription articles in a variety of fields)
Google Scholar (free index to mostly subscription articles)
Ovid Technologies (subscription-based collections and indexes)
ProQuest (subscription index to subscription articles)
Scirus (free index to academic web content)
Scopus (subscription-based index to journal articles, web content, patents, etc.)
Sens Public [3] databases, Journals, other web content in social sciences, art and philosophy (several languages)
Web of Science (subscription-based database aggregator)
Windows Live Academic (free index, still in beta)

[edit] Publisher or platform-specific

Blackwell Synergy [4] (subscription-based collection)
HighWire (subscription-based and free collection)
IngentaConnect [5] (subscription-based collection)
JSTOR (subscription-based collection)

[edit] Open Access Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals (free collection and index)
LivRe! [6] (free list of journals)
Open J-Gate (free collection of articles)

[edit] Specific subjects

[edit] Natural sciences, mathematics and computer science

ADS (Astrophysics Data System) (free index to Astrophysics, Geophysics & Physics journals and conference proceedings)
Arxiv free index to free articles) one of many popular ways to access it at the University of California, Davis.
CiteSeer (free index to free and subscription-based articles)
The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies (free)
SPIRES free index to all the literature of particle physics, most articles free via Arxiv but also indexes subscription journals and conferences.

[edit] Social sciences

ERIC (Educational Resource Information Center) (free index to subscription articles on education)
NBER (free index to subscription articles in economics)
RePEc (free index to partly free articles in economics)
SSRN (free index to mostly free articles in the social sciences)