Google is great, but a general search won’t always connect you to the most authoritative information you need for your serious studies. Academic search engines are much more useful and can you save you time when you’re looking for scholarly journals, primary sources, and quality documents for your research. Here are 100 essential academic engines for students and educators.
These databases and engines can find all sorts of journals and materials for you, no matter the field of study.
- IntegentaConnect: Find all sorts of journals, reports, articles and other resources for academic research.
- Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE): BASE is a multidisciplinary search engine based in Norway.
- Airiti: This Taiwan-based knowledge service features databases, journals, audio and visual searches and more.
- Google Scholar: This easy-to-use Google search brings up scholarly articles and journals only.
- EBSCO: EBSCO Publishing’s subscription search engines are packed with abstracts, academic searches, journals, magazines and more.
- JSTOR: JSTOR is a popular search engine that lets you browse by title, category or publisher. You must have an account.
- SpringerLink: You can search articles, journals, book series, books, reference works and more resources from libraries around the world in all disciplines.
- Informaworld: You can find abstract databases, reference works, journals and ebooks from Taylor & Francis, Routledge, Psychology Press and Informa Healthcare.
- Open Archives Initiative: The OAI has made it easier for scholars and educators to access e-content here.
- African Journals Online: African studies majors and educators will find all types of resources from African publications here.
- InterScience: This search engine has more than just science articles: it’s also a good resource for law, education, the humanities and more.
- National Diet Library: Japan’s National Diet Library has an electronic library and online gallery, including rare books.
- ResearchChannel: Get webcasts and over 3,500 videos in business, computer science, social sciences, health, arts and more.
- Academic Index: Search various history references, art, law, literature and a lot more.
- Babieca: Babieca brings up files, video, news and answers.
- Scopus: Scopus has archived almost 18,000 titles from over 5,000 international publishers.
- Highbeam: Highbeam searches quality publications like The Economist as well as academic journals and publications.
- Questia: Ask your librarian or school to sponsor Questia to get access to a huge range of research support from magazines, encyclopedias, journals, books, newspapers and more.
- JournalSeek: Find online scholarly journals in every subject imaginable, from management to chemistry to linguistics.
- WebSEEk: Columbia University’s search engine finds videos, photos and graphics in all disciplines.
- UESCO: Find documents and publications from every field from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
- ERIC: The Education Resources Information Center database brings up abstracts, peer-reviewed papers and journals.
- Gold Rush: Gold Rush makes it easy to find specific items journals and articles based on your search terms.
- Journal Finder: UNC – Greensboro offers this online advanced search to help you find journals and articles.
- Project MUSE: You can find journals by title or discipline, like the American Literary History journal or Rhetoric and Public Affairs Journals.
- All Academic: From this site, you can search or browse abstracts and other reports from official academic and professional organizations, like the American Political Science Association or the Mathematical Association of America.
Arts and Humanities
These search engines are tailored for the arts and humanities, bringing up results in literature and language, the social sciences, law, business, economics, and more.
- Original Sources: You’ll need a paid subscription or a school’s subscription, but you can search original sources in history, science, culture, art and more.
- Bibliomania: Get literature, poetry, drama and reference search help here.
- The Internet Classics Archive: MIT’s engine has 441 works of classical literature in this archive.
- American Memory: This search engine lets you search LOC collections from American history subjects, like literature, advertising, cities and towns, and more.
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT’s Shakespeare collection lets you search the comedies, histories, tragedies and sonnets.
- The Koran: UVA’s Koran engine lets you search for specific text or browse the religious work.
- The Online Medieval and Classical Library: Browse by author, title, genre or keyword.
- European Minority Languages: Look up less popular languages like Gaelic here.
- The British Library: There are over 30,000 items in the online gallery and over 10,000 pages to search online.
- Arts and Humanities Citation Index: Thomson Scientific lets you search journals and articles in the arts and humanities.
- Anthropological Index Online: Use AIO to find current periodicals at The Anthropology Library at the British Museum.
- Census Bureau: Search by word or place to find data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
- Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index: The Pao Yue Kong Library at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University sponsors this search engine.
- EconLit: AEA members can access the EconLit search engine here.
- GENESIS: GENESIS is a searchable database for women’s studies sponsored by The Women’s Library, London Metropolitan University and the Research Support Libraries Programme.
- PhilPapers: Browse philosophy papers and journals here.
- SSRN eLibrary: The Social Science Research Network has a searchable database of abstracts and papers here.
- OpenJ-Gate: Search peer-reviewed or professional and industry journals here.
Education and Reference
Look for colleges, find higher ed publications, and more from these search engines.
- CollegeBOT: Look for scholarships, colleges and college resources from this engine.
- SearchEdu.com: From this engine, you can find online dictionaries, calculators, and all kinds of .edu sites.
- Peterson’s: Peterson’s is another college finder and higher education information resource.
- ED.gov: The U.S. Department of Education’s site can connect you to facts about education, statistics, program evaluations, publications, and more.
- dict.org: This is the ultimate engine for linguists and looking up words.
- CMU Pronouncing Dictionary: Carnegie Mellon’s engine lets you look up words, lexicon, synthesis and more.
- Glossarist: Look for glossaries across all fields here.
- RefSeek: Researchers use this engine to look up journals, encyclopedias, books and newspapers. RefSeek searches through 1 billion resources to find your results.
- StudyAbroad.com: Search for teach and study abroad programs and opportunities for high school, college and post-college.
- American Universities: The University of Florida provides this index of American Universities, with links to Canadian universities and community colleges.
These search tools will connect you to medical journals and other scholarly science journals and papers.
- ScienceDirect: All science niches are covered here, from engineering to health sciences and more.
- Science/AAAS: Conduct your own scientific research with the help of this website and database, which contains all sorts of science journals.
- Nature.com: Nature.com is another science search engine and resource center that allows you to pull up past issues and articles.
- EMBASE: You’ll find loads of research materials for biomedical questions and papers here.
- Scientific Commons: The ScientificCommons search engine has over 31 million publications.
- National Science Digital Library: Search the NSDL engine for iTunes collections, articles and more.
- National Science Foundation: Search this website for news articles, discoveries, articles and more.
- The National Academies: Choose to search for reports and books, journals, informational booklets, magazines, annual reports to Congress or e-newsletters to find resources for science, engineering and medicine.
- PubMed: You’ll find over 19 million citations for biomedical research here.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The CDC has great search support for looking up health care surveys and stats.
- CiteSeerX: Limit by authors, tables or documents when you use this academic scientific literature engine.
- Scirus: Look up expert-generated scientific articles and journals.
- OJOSE: Online Journal Search Engine lets you conduct advanced searches across all sorts of science, tech and health sites.
- Vadlo: This is a search engine for life sciences and biomedical sciences.
- Scientific American: You can "ask the experts" on Scientific American.
- arXiv.org: Cornell University’s open access engine features articles and more for physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics students.
- SciNet: SciNet finds you academic and quality resources in nanotechnology, physics, biology, astronomy and more.
- Whitney Medical Library: Yale’s medical library has all sorts of electronic journals and books here.
- National Library of Medicine: Researchers, librarians, health care professionals and students can find resources here.
From public libraries to university libraries, these databases and engines are terrific resources for all kinds of research.
- LISDIRAN: The virtual Persian libraries network has links and search support for ebooks, encyclopedias, digital libraries and more in the Middle East.
- WorldCat: WorldCat is a major search tool that lets you locate materials in libraries around the world.
- OCLC: Libraries from around the world can be searched here by region.
- The Open Library: Search scanned books and chapters here.
- Internet Archive: Get connected to digital archives, scholarly resources and quality web research materials.
- New York Public Library: The NYPL has lots of e-resources, including a digital gallery, search, iTunes materials and more.
- Yale University Library: Search Yale’s digital collections of journals and newspapers here.
- Library of Congress: Besides searching for materials in the library, the LOC has great digital collections too.
- Nici Virtual Library: The National Institute for Community Innovations offers access to the virtual library to educational institutions
- CiteULike: CiteULike is branded as "everyone’s library" and has over 3 million articles that you can store and share.
- Online Archive of California: The OAC connects to academic and public libraries across California and lets you browse collections online.
- Stanford Libraries: Stanford’s collection of electronic journals and newspapers can be searched by subject, vendor, title or ISSN.
- E-Research at Harvard Libraries: You can save and search for e-journals, e-books, e-encyclopedias and more from Harvard’s libraries.
- Columbia Digital Collections: Browse by digital collection like Chinese Paper Gods, Columbia Library Columns, or John Jay Papers here.
- Librarians’ Internet Index: Search by keyword or by choosing a subject like science, regional, health, government or or media.
- NewJour: Georgetown’s libraries list databases and archives here, too.
Computer science students will like these search engines just for them.
- SAGE: This is a game engine for computer programmers, designed for students.
- InformIT: Topics for search here include technology and business.
- UNC-CH Shareware Distribution: Look up shareware here.
- Computer User: This is a tech reference and search engine where you can find resources and use a glossary.
- Aerospace and High Technology Database: This database has documents, source lists and codes for subjects like life sciences, aerodynamics, lasers and masers, and more.
- Rexa: Computer science students can use this search engine from the University of Massachusetts.
Find even more specified academic engines here, for studying U.S. history, the Florida Everglades and beyond.
- THOMAS: Find legal and legislative materials from U.S. history here.
- Everglades Digital Library: In conjunction with the NSDL, FCLA and FIU, the Everglades Digital Library offers access to Florida natural history and Everglades research.
- Open Courseware Consortium: Use this engine to search for open courseware from the world’s top universities.
- CIA World Factbook: Look up information about a country’s geography, language, demographics, economy, history and more.
- SocioSite: Sociology students can find academic programs, associations, research centers, journals, libraries, courses and more from this engine.