This page contains a representative list of 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 engine is unclear for these complex document retrieval systems, see:
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.
| Name | Discipline(s) | Description | Access Cost | Provider(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Academic Publications eJournal | Multidisciplinary science (student based) | Student driven research abstracts, posters, articles, science specific search engine, public forum [1] | Free | APeJ search[2] |
| Academic Search | Multidisciplinary | Several versions: Complete, Elite, Premier, and Alumni Edition[3] | Subscription | EBSCO Publishing [4] |
| Aerospace & High Technology Database | Aerospace, Aeronautics, Astronautics | Subscription | ProQuest[5] | |
| AJOL: African Journals OnLine | Multidisciplinary | Scholarly journals published in Africa[6] | Free abstracts; Subscription full-text | African Journals OnLine[7] |
| AgeLine | Sociology, Gerontology | Includes information on aging-related topics, including economics, public health and policy. | Subscription | EBSCO Publishing[8] |
| AGRICOLA: Agricultural Online Access | Agriculture | Free & Subscription | Produced by the United States National Agricultural Library. Free access provided by NAL.[8] Subscription access provided by Proquest,[9] OVID.[10] | |
| AGRIS: Agricultural database | Agriculture | Covers agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, aquatic sciences and fisheries, human nutrition, extension literature from over 100 participating countries.
Material includes unique grey literature such as unpublished scientific and technical reports, theses, conference papers, government publications, and more. |
Free | Produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://agris.fao.org AGRIS |
| Airiti Inc | Multidisciplinary | China, Taiwan. | Subscription | Airiti Inc[11] |
| Analytical Abstracts | Chemistry | Subscription | Royal Society of Chemistry[12] | |
| Analytical sciences digital library | Analytical sciences | Free | National Science Digital Library and the Analytical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society[13] | |
| Anthropological Index Online | Anthropology | Index only (no abstracts or full-text). | Free | Royal Anthropological Institute [14] |
| Anthropological Literature | Anthropology | Syllaba Press [15] | Free to Harvard faculty, staff and students. Subscription for non-Harvard access. | Maintained by Harvard University. Non-Harvard access provided by OCLC[16] |
| eLum Index Online | Anthropology, Archaeology, Sociology | Include full access to electronic documents (eBooks and eJournals) about Anthropology, Archaeology & Sociology Research in Latin America(full-text). | Subscription | |
| Arachne | Archaeology, Art history | German language | Free | German Archaeological Institute & the University of Cologne, administered by Reinhard Foertsch[17] |
| Arnetminer | Computer Science | Online service used to index and search academic social networks | Free | Tsinghua University[18] |
| Arts & Humanities Citation Index | Arts, Humanities | Part of Web of Science | Subscription | Thomson Reuters[19] |
| arXiv | Physics, Mathematics, Computer science, Nonlinear sciences, Quantitative biology and Statistics | Free | Cornell University[20] | |
| Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library | Computer Science, Engineering | Subscription | Association for Computing Machinery[21] | |
| Astrophysics Data System | Astrophysics, Geophysics, Physics | Free | Harvard University[22] | |
| ATLA Religion Database | Religious studies | Provides information on topics such as biblical studies, world religions, church history, and religion in social issues | Subscription | [23] |
| AULIMP: Air University Library's Index to Military Periodicals | Military Science | Free | Air University[24] | |
| BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine | Multidisciplinary | Free | Bielefeld University [25] | |
| Beilstein database | Organic chemistry | Subscription | Available from Elsevier under the product name Reaxys [26] | |
| Biological Abstracts | Biology | A complete collection of bibliographic references covering life science and biomedical research literature published from more than 4,000 journals internationally. | Subscription | Available from Thomson Reuters[27] |
| BioOne | Biology, Ecology, and Environmental Science | An aggregation of over 78,000 peer-reviewed, full-text articles on current research in Biodiversity Conservation, Biology, Ecology, Plant Sciences, Entomology, Ornithology, and Zoology. | Free Abstract & References, Subscription Collections, and an Open Access Collection | Available from BioOne[28] |
| Bioinformatic Harvester | Biology, Bioinformatics | A meta search engine for 50 major bioinformatic databases and projects. | Free | Available from Liebel-Lab [9] KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology [10] |
| Book Review Index Online | Book reviews | Subscription | Thomson Gale[29] | |
| Books In Print | Books | Subscription | R.R. Bowker[30] | |
| Chemical Abstracts Service | Chemistry | Subscription | American Chemical Society[31] | |
| ChemXSeer | Chemistry | Free | Pennsylvania State University[32] | |
| Chinese Social Science Citation Index | Social sciences | Subscription | Nanjing University[33] | |
| Cochrane Library | Medicine, Healthcare | Includes reviews of research to promote evidence-based healthcare. | Subscription | Wiley Interscience[34] |
| CINAHL: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health | Nursing, Allied Health | Subscription | EBSCO[35] | |
| CHBD: Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database | Medicine | Free | University of Calgary[36] | |
| Citebase Search | Mathematics, Computer science, Physics | Semi-autonomous citation index of free online research | Free | University of Southampton[37] |
| CiteSeer | Computer Science | Replaced by CiteSeerX. | Free | Pennsylvania State University[38] |
| CiteSeerX | Computer Science | Free | Pennsylvania State University[39] | |
| CogPrints: Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archives | Science (General) | Free | University of Southampton[40] | |
| The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies | Computer science | Free | Alf-Christian Achilles[41] | |
| Compendex | Engineering | Electronic version of Engineering Index. | Subscription | Elsevier[42] |
| Current Index to Statistics | Statistics | Limited free search[43] | Subscription | American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics[44] |
| Current Contents | Multidisciplinary | Part of Web of Knowledge. Contains 7 discipline-specific subsets. | Subscription | Thompson Reuters[45] |
| Directory of Open Access Journals | Journals | Free | Lund University[46] | |
| DBLP | Computer science | Comprehensive list of papers from major computer science conferences and journals | Free | University of Trier, Germany |
| Dotec-Colombia | Economics | Working papers and articles about economics in Colombia. More than 5,000 documents from more than 50 institutions in the country. Dotec-Colombia automatically links all documents in Repec | Free | Dotec-Colombia [47] |
| EconLit | Economics | The American Economic Association's electronic database, the world's foremost source of references to economic literature. | Subscription | Produced by the American Economic Association.[48] Available from CSA, DIALOG, OCLC, OVID, and AEA.[49] |
| EMBASE | Biomedicine, Pharmacology | Biomedical database with a strong focus on drug and pharmaceutical research. | Subscription | Elsevier[50] |
| ERIC: Educational Resource Information Center | Education | Education literature and resources. Provides access to over 1.3 million records dating back to 1966. | Free | Produced by the United States Department of Education.[51] Also available by subscription from OCLC, CSA. |
| Food Science and Technology Abstracts | Food science, Food technology, Nutrition | The world's leading database of information on food science, food technology and nutrition | Subscription | Produced by the International Food Information Service. Access provided by OVID, Web of Knowledge, Dialog, DataStar and STN International[52] |
| FOREASt: Free Open Resources for East Asian Studies | East Asian Studies | Covers over 300 free and open access resources for studying China, Japan, and Korea, including online databases, digital collections, and open access journals. | Free | Internet East Asian Library[53] |
| Fuse | Business research papers | A business research engine, indexing 728 open-access ejournals and similar open sources. Does not search press releases or trade magazines. | Free | Fuse[54] |
| GENESIS | Women's history | Descriptions of women's history collections from sources in the UK, as well as women's history websites. | Free | London Metropolitan University[55] |
| German Education Index | Education | A bibliographical database that provides comprehensive references to all areas of education. | Free | Coordinating Office of the German Education Index[56] |
| Google Scholar | Multidisciplinary | Free | Google[57] | |
| GoPubMed | Medicine | Free | Transinsight GmbH [58] | |
| HubMed | Medicine | An alternative interface to the PubMed medical literature database | Free | Alf Eaton[59] |
| IEEE Xplore | Computer Science, Engineering, Electronics | Subscription | IEEE [60] | |
| Information Bridge: Department of Energy Scientific and Technical Information | Multidisciplinary | The Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information provides free public access to over 266,000 full-text documents and bibliographic citations of Department of Energy (DOE) research report literature. Documents are primarily from 1991 forward and were produced by DOE, the DOE contractor community, and/or DOE grantees. Legacy documents are added as they become available in electronic format. | Free | United States Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information[61] |
| Informit | Multidisciplinary | Australasian aggregator of bibliographic databases and journals | N/A | RMIT Publishing[62] |
| Infotopia | Multidisciplinary | United States search engine of academic sites approved by librarians, teachers, and consortia | Free | Dr. Michael Bell[63] |
| IngentaConnect | Multidisciplinary | Free searching; Subscription full-text | Ingenta[64] | |
| Indian citation Index (ICI) | Multidisciplinary | Subscription Bibliographical, full-text | ICI[65] | |
| Inspec | Physics, Engineering, Computer Science | The leading bibliographic database providing abstracts and indexing to the world's scientific and technical papers in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computing, information technology, manufacturing, production, and mechanical engineering. | Subscription | IET[66] |
| Interred educational search engine | Multidisciplinary | Is a semantic web search engine for education. | Free | Interred[67] |
| InTechOpen | Multidisciplinary | Open access books and journals in science, technology and medicine. | Free | InTech[68] |
| International Directory of Philosophy | Philosophy | Contains information on university philosophy departments and programs, philosophical societies, research centers, journals, and philosophy publishers around the world. | Subscription | Philosophy Documentation Center[69] |
| Intute | Multidisciplinary | Serves students, teachers, and researchers in UK further education and higher education, offering a selection of around 300,000 academic websites which have been hand-picked and described by subject specialists. | Free | Intute[70] |
| Intwine | Arts and Humanities | Allows the searching of the full-text of all academic websites catalogued by the Intute arts and humanities service from 2005–2010. | Free | Intwine[71] |
| JournalSeek | Multidisciplinary | Open access journals in different language | Links to journal's home page and publishers | JournalSeek[72] |
| JSTOR: Journal Storage | Multidisciplinary (Historical) | Subscription | JSTOR[73] | |
| JURN | Arts and Humanities | Search and retrieve the full-text of over 3,600 scholarly ejournals in the arts and humanities. | Free | JURN[74] |
| LexisNexis | Law (general) | Electronic database for legal and public-records related information | Subscription | Reed Elsevier |
| MathSciNet | Mathematics | Available in print as Mathematical Reviews | Subscription | American Mathematical Society[75] |
| MedlinePlus | Medicine | Free | Produced by the United States National Library of Medicine, the United States National Institutes of Health, and the United States Department of Health and Human Services[76] | |
| Mendeley | Multidisciplinary | The Mendeley research catalog is a crowdsourced database of research documents. Researchers have uploaded nearly 100M documents into the catalog with additional contributions coming directly from subject repositories like Pubmed Central and Arxiv.org or web crawls. | Free | Mendeley[77] |
| Merck Index | Chemistry, Biology, Pharmacology | Also available in print. | Subscription | Produced by Merck & Co.. Available from CambridgeSoft Corporation, Dialog, Knovel, MedicinesComplete, STN International[78] |
| Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts | Meteorology, Astrophysics, Geology | Subscription | Produced by the American Meteorological Society. Available from Dialog[79] and CSA.[80] | |
| Microsoft Academic Search | Computer Science and a limited extent on information science | Provides many innovative ways to explore scientific papers, conferences, journals, and authors[81] | Free | Microsoft |
| NBER: National Bureau of Economic Research | Economics | Free | National Bureau of Economic Research[82] | |
| National Criminal Justice Reference Service[83] | Criminology, Sociology | Abstracts of scholarly journal articles, agency and NGO reports, and conference proceedings | Free | United States Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs[84] |
| National Diet Library Collection | Multidisciplinary | Japanese. Catalog for the National Library of Japan. | N/A | National Diet Library[85] |
| OAIster | Multidisciplinary | Free | OCLC [86] | |
| Odysci Academic Search | Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and related research topics | A web portal for academic search and rank and technical collaboration, in the computer science, electrical engineering and related research topics. | Free | Odysci [87] |
| Open Access Journals Search Engine (OAJSE) | Multidisciplinary | Provides Searching and Browsing of Open Access Journals | Free | Open Access Journals Search Engine (OAJSE).[88] |
| Open J-Gate | Journals | Index of open access journals | Free | Informatics India Ltd.[89] |
| OpenSIGLE | Grey literature | Indexes European grey literature. | Free | Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique[90] |
| Philosophy Documentation Center eCollection | Applied ethics, Philosophy, Religious studies | Journals, series, conference proceedings, and other works from several countries. | Subscription | Philosophy Documentation Center[91] |
| Philosophy Research Index | Philosophy | Index of books, journals, disserations, and other documents | Subscription | Philosophy Documentation Center[92] |
| PhilPapers | Philosophy | Free | PhilPapers[93] | |
| PhilSci Archive | Philosophy | Philosophy of science e-print archive | Free | PhilSci Archive[94] |
| POIESIS: Philosophy Online Serials | Philosophy | Journals and series | Subscription | Philosophy Documentation Center [95] |
| PsychSpider | Psychology | Psychology search engine, which indexes Web content as well as bibliographic (meta-) data. Approximately 1.2 Mio documents from the surface Web and the invisible Web are accessible from a single point of entry. | Free | Produced by the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information.[96] |
| PsycINFO | Psychology | The largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. It contains over 2.6 million citations and summaries dating as far back as the early 19th century. | Subscription | Produced by the APA.[97] Available from several database vendors.[98] |
| PSYNDEX | Psychology | PSYNDEX is the most comprehensive abstract database (not full-text) of psychological literature, audiovisual media, intervention programs and tests from the German-speaking countries. | Subscription | Produced by the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information.[99] |
| Pubget | Multidisciplinary | Subscription | Pubget | |
| PubMed | Medicine | Free | National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Library of Medicine[100] | |
| PubChem | Chemistry | Free | National Center for Biotechnology Information and the U.S. National Library of Medicine [101] | |
| Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature | Journals and Magazines | Coverage: 1983–present. | Subscription | H. W. Wilson Company[102] |
| Reader's Guide Retrospective: 1890–1982 | Journals and Magazines | Subscription | H. W. Wilson Company[103] | |
| RePEc: Research Papers in Economics | Economics | Free | Volunteer Collaboration [104] | |
| Rock's Backpages | Music | Primary documents from the history of rock and roll | Subscription. Limited free access with registration. | Backpages Limited[105] |
| SafetyLit[106] | Multidisciplinary | Citations and abstracts of journal articles and reports from researchers working in the more than 35 distinct professional disciplines (architecture - zoology) relevant to preventing unintentional injuries, violence, and self-harm. | Free | San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health[107] and the World Health Organization, Department of Violence and Injury Prevention[108] |
| Science.gov | Multidisciplinary | A gateway to government science information and research results. Science.gov provides a search of over 45 scientific databases and 200 million pages of science information with just one query, and is a gateway to over 2000 scientific Websites. | Free | Science.gov Alliance, 18 scientific and technical organizations from 14 federal agencies that contribute to Science.gov. United States Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information serves as the operating agent for Science.gov.[109] |
| Science Accelerator | Multidisciplinary | A gateway to results of DOE research and development and major R&D accomplishments of interest to DOE. | Free | United States Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information.[110] |
| Science Citation Index | Science (General) | Part of Web of Science | Subscription | Thompson Reuters[111] |
| ScienceDirect | Multidisciplinary | Subscription | Elsevier[112] | |
| Scirus | Science (General) | Free | Elsevier[113] | |
| Scopus | Multidisciplinary | Subscription | Elsevier[114] | |
| SearchTeam | Multidisciplinary | Students search together collaboratively for scholarly articles and resources | Free | Zakta[115] |
| SeDiCI UNLP [116] | Multidisciplinary | Journal articles, conferences' proceedings, theses, pictures and all the Intellectual Creation from the National University of La Plata | Free | National University of La Plata[117] |
| Social Science Citation Index | Social science | Part of Web of Science | Subscription | Thompson Reuters[118] |
| Socol@r: Socolar | Multidisciplinary | Scholarly open access resources in different language | Free abstracts; Links to full-text | Socolar[119] |
| SSRN: Social Science Research Network | Social science | Contains an abstracts database and a electronic paper collection, arranged by discipline. | Free | Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc.[120] |
| SSRRN: Social Science Research Resources Network | Social science | Indexes datasets and statistical codes | Free | Social Science Research Resources Network =[121] |
| SPIRES-HEP | Physics, (High Energy) | Free | Stanford Linear Accelerator Center & partners [122] | |
| SpringerLink | Multidisciplinary | Free abstract & preview; Subscription full-text | Springer [123] | |
| TDG Scholar | Computer science scholarly articles | Free | The Distributed Group[124] | |
| Theological Journals Search | Theology, Religious studies | Allows searching and retrieval of full text articles from over 350 open access journals. | Free | Google[125] |
| Udemy | Multidisciplinary | Allows anyone to teach and learn online through videos, webinars, forums, and more. | Free | Udemy |
| Ulrich's Periodicals Directory | Periodicals | Subscription | Proquest[126] | |
| VADLO | Biomedicine, Life science | Categories indexed: Protocols, Online tools, Powerpoints, Databases, Software | Free | VADLO[127] |
| Web of Knowledge | Multidisciplinary | Includes other products, such as Web of Science, Biological Abstracts & The Zoological Record | Subscription | Thomson Reuters[128] |
| Web of Science | Science (General) | Includes other products, such as Social Science Citation Index & Science Citation Index. | Subscription | Thomson Reuters[129] |
| WestLaw | Law (General) | Subscription | Thomson Reuters | |
| WorldCat | Multidisciplinary | Unified catalog of member libraries' catalogs | Free & Subscription | OCLC[130] |
| WorldWideScience | Multidisciplinary | WorldWideScience is a global science gateway composed of national and international scientific databases and portals. WorldWideScience accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching of databases from around the world. Multilingual WorldWideScience provides real-time searching and translation of globally dispersed multilingual scientific literature. | Free | The WorldWideScience Alliance, a multilateral partnership, consists of participating member countries and provides the governance structure for WorldWideScience. United States Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information serves as the operating agent for WorldWideScience.[131] |
| Zasshi Kiji Sakuin: Japanese Periodicals Index | Journals | Japanese. | N/A | National Diet Library's Online Catalog,[132] MagazinePlus,[133] CiNii[134] |
| Zentralblatt MATH | Mathematics | First three records free without subscription. | Subscription | Springer Science+Business Media[135] |
| The Zoological Record | Zoology | Unofficial register of scientific names & papers in Zoology. Coverage 1864–present. | Subscription | Thompson Reuters[136] |
[[es:Anexo:Bases de datos académicas y motores de búsqueda]