examples of online databases for research

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Online Databases for Research: Guide to the Best Free & Paid DBs

Written By: Cheyenne Kolosky

• August 25, 2023

The Full Guide To Online Databases For Research

Online databases have become essential tools for researchers in various fields. They offer easy access to a vast amount of information, including academic journals, scientific studies, business reports, government , and medical records. 

In this guide, we will explore the world of online databases and provide you with valuable insights on how to use them effectively for your research needs. But first things first, let’s take a look at how online databases revolutionized research, and what they are. 

What are Online Databases?

In the past, researchers had to rely on physical libraries and manually search through countless books and journals to find relevant information. This process was not only time-consuming but also limited the scope of research to what was available locally.

An online database, on the other hand, is a digital repository that stores and organizes vast amounts of information, making it easily accessible to users across the globe. They help researchers with: 

• Storing large volumes of data 
• Searching capabilities
• Sorting and organizing data
• Filtering data 
• And data visualization tools.

These databases can also be discipline-specific, covering areas such as academic research, scientific data, business analytics, and medical records. And with the features and discipline-specific organization, this allows researchers to save a significant amount of time. 

The Top Reasons Online Databases Drive Better Thinking

The significance of online databases in research cannot be overstated. Here are a few reasons of why they are so paramount for researchers: 

• They provide them with quick and efficient access to high-quality, peer-reviewed data and scholarly articles. 
• They allow them to expedite their work.
• They allow them to access recent findings.
• They help establish a solid foundation for their own studies.
• They foster collaboration among them.
• They allow for the sharing and dissemination of knowledge.
• They allow them to contribute to the collective body of knowledge in their respective fields.
• They can leverage online databases to extract meaningful insights and identify patterns that would otherwise be impossible to uncover.

Furthermore, online databases have democratized access to information. In the past, access to certain resources was limited to those who could afford expensive subscriptions or had access to prestigious institutions. With online databases, anyone with an internet connection can access a wealth of information, leveling the playing field and promoting inclusivity in research.

As technology continues to advance, online databases will play an even more significant role in shaping the future of research. But now that we understand what online databases are, and why they are so crucial, let’s look at the different types of online databases for research. 

The 4 Main Types of Online Databases for Research

Online databases come in various forms, tailored to meet the specific needs of different research disciplines. Let’s explore some of the commonly used types:

Academic Databases

Academic databases are designed to cater to the needs of scholars across different fields. These databases act as virtual libraries, allowing researchers to access a vast collection of information from the comfort of their own computers. They provide access to:

• Peer-reviewed articles
• Conference papers
• Dissertations
• And other scholarly works. 

Academic databases allow researchers to search for articles based on specific keywords, authors, or publication dates, making it easier and more efficient for scholars to find relevant sources and build upon existing knowledge.

They can also utilize advanced search filters like citation tracking to narrow down their results and find the most relevant and recent publications. Here are 20 examples of online academic databases for research:

And these aren’t the only databases that you will find out there. So, if you’re a researcher, get to digging! Now let’s look at a few examples for scientific databases.  

Science Databases

Science databases focus on scientific research and encompass a wide range of subjects, including:

• And environmental sciences. 

These databases play a crucial role in advancing scientific knowledge by providing researchers with access to scientific journals, experimental data, and research findings. And they don’t only provide access to published articles but also include preprints, which are preliminary versions of research papers that have not yet undergone peer review. 

This allows researchers to access cutting-edge research before it is officially published, promoting collaboration and the exchange of ideas within the scientific community. Additionally, these databases often offer tools for data analysis, enabling researchers to explore and interpret complex scientific data. Let’s look at some examples.

While these articles and databases offer an extensive amount of scientific information, there is more out there and it looks like these databases will forever grow. Now let’s take a look at some business databases you could also consult. 

Business Databases 

Business databases provide access to market research reports, financial data, industry trends, and case studies. These databases are invaluable resources for entrepreneurs, market analysts, and business students who need to make informed decisions based on accurate and up-to-date information.

Business databases often include company profiles, which provide detailed information about a company’s history, financial performance, key executives, and competitors. This information is crucial for: 

• Conducting market research
• Identifying potential business opportunities
• And understanding the competitive landscape. 

Business databases also offer industry reports that provide in-depth analysis of specific sectors, helping professionals stay informed about market trends, consumer behavior, and emerging technologies. Let’s look at some examples: 

It’s easy to say that if you’re just starting out of thinking of starting a business, or you’re a seasoned pro, your business could benefit immensely from these business databases. But these aren’t the only type of database, so let’s look at medical databases and some examples. 

Medical Databases

Medical databases focus on healthcare research and provide access to clinical trials, patient records, medical literature, and drug information. They enable healthcare professionals to stay informed about the latest developments in medical science and make informed decisions about patient care. 

Furthermore, these databases include diagnostic tools and medical calculators, which aid healthcare professionals in making accurate diagnoses and treatment decisions. These databases also provide access to drug databases, which contain information about medications, their indications, dosages, and potential side effects. 

Lastly, researchers can utilize medical databases to conduct systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which help summarize and evaluate existing research on a particular medical topic. So, let’s look at some examples of databases that are available in the market today. 

It’s easy to say that there are millions of articles, research reports, studies, journals, and more that you can look up to further enhance your own research. And now that we have understood what online databases are, and the different types available, let’s take a look at how you can access them. 

How to Access Online Databases

As we have seen, online databases are available in multiple forms of access. The main three types of access to databases are free databases, paid databases, and library access. Let’s look at each of these in a bit more detail. 

Free Databases 

When it comes to free databases, it’s important to keep in mind that while they may provide a starting point for your research, they often have limitations. For example, they may not have access to the latest research articles or provide full-text access to certain publications. However, they can still be a valuable resource, especially for general information or preliminary research.

Paid Databases 

Paid databases offer a wealth of information that is regularly updated and curated by experts in the field. They may also offer advanced search features, citation tools, and other functionalities that can enhance your research process.

While they require a subscription or access fee, they are often worth the investment for those  who rely on up-to-date information. Many universities, research institutions, and organizations provide access to these databases as part of their resources, so it’s worth checking if you have access through your affiliation.

Library Access to Databases

Many libraries provide access to online databases for their patrons. And they are not limited to a specific subject area, so you are likely to find relevant resources. By utilizing these resources, you can take advantage of a wide range of databases without incurring additional costs.

Accessing databases through the library usually requires a library card or an institutional login. Once you have obtained the necessary credentials, you can access the databases either on-site at the library or remotely from your own device. 

In addition, librarians are trained professionals who can help you navigate databases, refine your search strategies, and locate relevant resources for your specific research needs. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your local librarian for guidance and support!

Build You Own! 

Don’t forget in this modern age you can easily build your own database with no coding skills required. If your organization needs an internal wiki or document repository that connects all the dots between external data, internal research, and a variety of business use cases a customizable online database can be a great solution to drive change internally. For example many local governments utilize our online government database apps to easily manage their work with local constituents.  

Top 7 Tips to Navigate Online Databases

When conducting research online, accessing and utilizing online databases can be a game-changer. These databases provide a vast array of information from various sources, making them an invaluable resource for researchers, students, and professionals alike. 

However, to get the most out of these databases, it is essential to navigate through them effectively and efficiently. So to further enhance your knowledge on databases here are some tips to streamline your searches:

• Consider combining your keywords with Boolean operators such as “AND,” “OR,” and “NOT,” to help you retrieve more specific and relevant information. 
• Use quotation marks for exact phrases to refine your search and ensure that the results match your specific needs.
• Utilize the various filters and sorting options to further refine your search results. 
• Familiarize yourself with the database’s features and functionalities to make the most of your research experience.
• Use the index system which categorizes data based on specific criteria, such as subject, author, or publication date. 
• Broaden your search terms to look at what other information is available, such as “Science” or “History,”. 
• Check to see if you can search within the title, abstract, or full text of an article. 

By utilizing advanced search techniques, such as Boolean operators and quotation marks, and taking advantage of filters and sorting options, you can streamline your searches and retrieve more accurate results. 

Additionally, understanding the unique structure and organization of each database, including the indexing system, subject categories, and relevant search fields, will enable you to navigate through them effectively and retrieve the most relevant information for your research.

The 4 Factors to Consider the Credibility of Online Databases

When conducting research online, it is essential to ensure that the databases you rely on provide accurate and trustworthy information. With the abundance of information available on the internet, it can be challenging to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources. 

However, by considering a few key criteria, you can evaluate the credibility of online databases effectively. So in order to do this, consider this criteria:

• Look for databases that obtain their data from reputable sources, such as scholarly journals, government publications, or well-known research institutions. 
• Consider whether the database has a rigorous peer-review process which involves subjecting research articles to the scrutiny of experts in the field before publication. 
• Check for clear citation information for the articles or studies, which will allow you to trace the origins of the information and verify its accuracy. 
• Consider the database’s coverage of your specific research area which will help you find comprehensive and diverse information for your research. 

By following these four main tips, you should be able to track the credibility of the material you are reading. But to really go in depth on what you should look out for, here are some red flags you should keep in mind. 

Common Red Flags in Online Databases

While evaluating online databases, it is crucial to be aware of certain red flags that may indicate a lack of credibility or reliability. Here are some of the most common examples:

• If the database does not clearly state where it obtains its information or if the sources are questionable, it is wise to approach the database with caution. 
• Non-peer-reviewed content in the database, which may indicate a lower level of credibility. 
• Databases that display outdated information. Cross-checking the information you find in multiple reputable sources can help ensure accuracy and reliability.

Remember, thorough evaluation of online databases is a vital step in ensuring the quality of your research and the validity of your findings. 

Future Trends in Online Databases

As technology continues to advance, online databases are evolving to meet the changing needs of researchers. For example, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is enhancing search capabilities, automating data analysis, and providing personalized recommendations. They also help researchers discover hidden patterns and make connections within vast amounts of data. As we move into this bright future expect businesses to integrate ever more data into their 

Furthermore, the emergence of big data has helped us gain the ability to store and process massive volumes of data which researchers can access. The integration of big data analytics into online databases is expected to drive innovation and pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries. 

Last Thoughts Finding The Right Online Databases for You

Online databases provide researchers with a wealth of information and resources at their fingertips. By understanding how to navigate, evaluate, and utilize these databases effectively, researchers can enhance the quality and efficiency of their work. 

Stay up-to-date with emerging trends and continually explore new databases to ensure you harness the full potential of online databases in your research endeavors. We hope you find what you’re looking for! If you would like to build your own custom database for your organization, sign up for a free trial today . 

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21 Legit Research Databases for Free Journal Articles in 2022

#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 2022.

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.

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." They publish the journal Research Integrity and Peer Review , which publishes research on the subject.

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, and 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 you now might have a list of some 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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Fantastic databases and where to find them: Web applications for researchers in a rush

Gerda cristal villalba.

1 Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Laboratório de células, tecidos e genes, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.

2 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Genética e Biologia Molecular, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.

3 Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Bioinformatics Core, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.

Ursula Matte

4 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Departamento de Genética, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.

Authors Contributions: GCVS conceived and designed the study, and analyzed the data; GCVS and UM wrote the manuscript, and UM revised the final version of this paper. All authors read and approved the final version.

Associated Data

Public databases are essential to the development of multi-omics resources. The amount of data created by biological technologies needs a systematic and organized form of storage, that can quickly be accessed, and managed. This is the objective of a biological database. Here, we present an overview of human databases with web applications. The databases and tools allow the search of biological sequences, genes and genomes, gene expression patterns, epigenetic variation, protein-protein interactions, variant frequency, regulatory elements, and comparative analysis between human and model organisms. Our goal is to provide an opportunity for exploring large datasets and analyzing the data for users with little or no programming skills. Public user-friendly web-based databases facilitate data mining and the search for information applicable to healthcare professionals. Besides, biological databases are essential to improve biomedical search sensitivity and efficiency and merge multiple datasets needed to share data and build global initiatives for the diagnosis, prognosis, and discovery of new treatments for genetic diseases. To show the databases at work, we present a a case study using ACE2 as example of a gene to be investigated. The analysis and the complete list of databases is available in the following website <https://kur1sutaru.github.io/fantastic_databases_and_where_to_find_them/>.

Introduction

The advent of sequencing technologies has motivated the development of public databases initiatives. Recently, there has been an exponential growth in generation of biological data, and these require information technology tools to store, organize and analyze biological data that is available in the form of raw data, annotated sequences, tables, and other archive files generated by omics technologies ( Toomula et al. , 2012 ).

The first reported biological database was a protein sequence database developed by Margaret Dayhoff in 1965. She also created the first substitution matrix for point accepted mutations (PAM) and the one-letter code for amino acids ( Strasser, 2012 ). In the early 1980s, the EMBL Data Library (currently European Nucleotide Archive, <https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena>) created a catalog of published biological data. A timeline with some historical facts about biological databases are provided in Figure 1 .

A biological database is a collection of data organized in systematic contents that can quickly be accessed, managed, and updated (Toomula et al. , 2012). Biological databases usually use relational management frameworks and the Standard Query Language (SQL), which allows data definition as well as data manipulation statements ( Kriegel and Schonauer, 2004 ).

According to the level of data curation, biological databases are divided into primary and secondary databases. Primary databases store experimental data from nucleotide sequence, protein sequence, or molecular structure. Secondary databases comprise data from the results of analyzing primary data and has become a reference library for just about any gene or gene product that has been investigated by the research community ( Selzer et al., 2008 ; Zou et al., 2015 ).

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI, <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/>) classifies the biological databases in Comprehensive and Specialized. Comprehensive databases store data from many organisms and many different types of sequences, for example, nucleotide, protein, and genomes. Specialized databases contain data from specific organisms (e.g., humans or mice), with functional or sequence information, and data generated by specific sequencing technologies.

Here we present an overview of human databases with web applications. The databases and tools allow to search biological sequences, genes and genomes, gene expression patterns, epigenetic variation, protein-protein interactions, variant frequency, regulatory elements, and comparative analysis between human and model organisms. Our goal is to provide an overview of available tools for exploring large datasets and analyzing the data for users with little or no programming skills.

We reviewed the databases from two platforms of multi-omic data: Biotools: Bioinformatics Tools and Services Discovery Portal ( Ison et al., 2013 , <https://bio.tools/>) and OMICtools: an informative directory for multi-omic data analysis ( Henry et al., 2014 , <https://omictools.com/>). We revised the tools from 15 March 2020 to 15 April 2020.

In the OMICtools portal, we used the keywords “human resources”, in the “Databases” tab, sorted by “A to Z” and Taxonomy: “ Homo sapiens ”. Subsequently, we discarded the results found that were of non-human species. In the Biotools portal, we used the keywords “human” and “Web application”, the categories were found in the description of the filtering tools. We discarded the tools with the ‘Temporarily unavailable’ flag.

The Newt Scamander and its magic creatures

The Omictools portal includes more than 4400 tools, classified by software, protocols, datasets, operation system, distribution when web user interface was selected. When filtered by the organisms represented in the tools, we obtained 1390 tools ( Figure 2 ). When we chose only human results, we obtained 762 tools, divided in to Genomic Databases (91), Gene expression (81), miRNA (50), Protein-Protein Interaction (45), Rare/low frequency variation (28), Variant-disease association (28), Disease-specific variation (24), Proteome (23), LncRNA (17), miRNA target (17), Transcription Factor (17), DNA methylation (16), Metabolic network (15), Alternative Splicing (14), Cis-regulatory DNA element (12), Genetic association (12), Sequence databases (12), Comparative Genome (10), Enzyme databases (10), Gene regulatory network (10). Some tools were found in more than two of the classifications above. Besides, some of the tools were with the sites under maintenance or unavailable. For human databases, we revised 505 tools, detailed in Tables S1 - S9 .

In the Biotools portal, we found a total of 17,234 tools, divided into eight popular terms: Genetics, Proteins, Nucleic acids, Sequence analysis, Structure analysis, Omics, Virology and vaccine design, and Other. In order to facilitate the count of tools, we subdivided the classification in six terms presented in Figure 3 . Filtered by human tools, we found 838 tools, and restricting to only “human Web Applications”, we found 235 tools. When excluded the unavailable tools, we obtained 178 tools listed in Tables S1 - S9 .

There are only 23 tools present in the two portals: Clinvar, COSMIC, dbGAP, dbMAE, dbSNP, DisGeNET, DO, GENCODE, GeneCards, GIANT, GTEx, Gencode, GeneCards, GTEx, HumanMine, HuPho, InvFEST, LOVD, OMIM, Pickle, ProteomicsDB, Pseudomap, Varsome ( Figure 4 ). In the next topic, we provide a brief description of the functionality and types of analysis that we can perform with the tools presented in this work. To facilitate, we grouped the tools into twelve general terms.

Databases and resources highlights

To illustrate the use of the databases reviewed here, we provided a Case Study with omic analysis using the ACE2 gene, the receptor of coronavirus SARS-Cov-2. The Case Study is available on <https://kur1sutaru.github.io/fantastic_databases_and_where_to_find_them/>.

Alternative splicing

In summary, we found 24 tools for splice site analysis, to analyze the effect of alternative splicing on protein interaction and network through alteration of protein structure, and to predict a splicing consequence of an SNV at intron positions in the human genome ( Table S1 ). Other databases search for constitutively and alternatively spliced introns and exons in humans and compare with other species. They also predict occurrences of alternative-splicing (AS) modes in the human genome, including exon skipping, 5’-alternative splicing, 3’-alternative splicing and intron retention. Some databases provide a curated catalog of Alternative Splicing sites and gene transcripts, and to assign the function to the human protein-coding splice variants (PCSVs). Most of the results are obtained in molecular studies and based on Machine Learning predictions. Usually, the input is the Gene ID or Symbol, or a Fasta file containing the interest sequence. Some tools present the results in the browser with graphical reports and results are available for download.

Cancer databases

We found 56 tools ( Table S2 ) and databases which provide genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic profiles of a large group of tumor types with available tumor and normal tissue samples for comparisons, tools to predict the recognition of cancer epitopes by human T cell receptors (TCRs), literature mining of cancer-related genes in human, resources for exploring the impact of somatic mutations in human cancer, tools for inferring human and mouse gene expression patterns in various normal and cancerous tissues, and information about isoform-level expression analysis. Also, there are systematic analysis of mutations affecting cancer drug sensitivity based on individual genomic profiles from large-scale chemical screening using human cancer cell lines. Human cancer-specific microRNA- (miRNA) target interactions, protein-protein interactions (PPI), and functionally synergistic miRNA pairs are also available. aCGH data is analyzed to yield gene-specific copy numbers in different types of tumors.

Beyond this, many databases provide a compilation of cancer cell lines, driver genes, cancer metastasis, metastasis suppressor and histological characteristics, and complex queries built on the Boolean logic rules. Many tools are disease-specific, such as Human Gastric Cancer or Pediatric Cancer, for example. The user can provide Gene ID, miRNA, type of tumor, tissue, or cell line to search in the databases. The results allow us to explore, compare, and analyze all available cancer data (Clinical data, Gene Mutation, Gene Methylation, Gene Expression, Protein Phosphorylation, Copy Number Alteration, and so on). Outputs include barplots, heatmaps, principal component analysis plots, volcano plot, and survival analysis possible to view in the browser or to download.

Comparative databases

We found 31 tools and databases on this topic ( Table S3 ). These tools give a comparative phenome-genome cross-species identification of genes associated with orthologous phenotypes, evolutionary analysis of genes, and comparative genomic analysis. Also comparisons between human and animal models’ genomes are available to investigate links between disease genes, experimental data dealing with antibody and T-cell epitopes studied in various animal species encompassing humans and non-human primates. Data about interacting regions (IRs) in human and mouse proteins, miRNA target sites across species, non-human primate reference transcriptomes, allow to analyze and compare human nonsynonymous SNPs (nsSNP) in protein structures, protein complexes, protein-protein interfaces, and metabolic networks. Users can browse a genome, gene or region, phenotype term, disease name, or tissue for comparison. The output may present alignment across the genomes of different animal models and gene information (species, chromosome, gene name, accession number). Other output options are alternative transcripts, phylogeny plots, and gene regulatory networks.

Disease-specific and variant-disease association

We found 84 tools and specialized databases ( Table S4 ) related to monogenic and complex diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Autism, mendelian genetic diseases, and variant databases, such as repositories of human mutations, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNV). The input, in general, is the gene ID or symbol or name of the disease. The output, in general, is a list of annotated variants with the position number (genomic or chromosomal position), and the impact of the variation (missense, nonsense, frameshift, among others). Many databases provide germline and somatic variants of any size, type or genomic location, and the possible interpretations of the clinical significance of variants for reported conditions. The user may also search for genes based on user-specific disease/phenotype terms.

Gene expression

In this specific topic, we found 116 tools and databases with data about transcript counts, gene expression in normal and diseased tissues ( Table S5 ). The databases comprehend data on age, apoptosis, gene expression in particular tissues or situations (such as allergy or immune response). Also, RNA-seq data from human and animal cells, single cell studies, and datasets for chromatin regulators and histone modifications are also available. The input can be a Gene ID, Pubmed ID, tissue cell or cell line, and phenotype information. The output is diverse across the databases, with tables, diagrams, heatmaps, barplot, and dotplot. Some databases present information about the gene structure, subcellular localization, primary function, cellular processes, and pathways. Many databases also inform the literature reference on the experimental data about the selected gene.

Genomic and sequence databases

We found 217 tools ( Table S6 ), related to post-translational (PTM) modification sites and mutations (both germline and somatic) from multiple sources, mitochondrial sequences coming from ancient DNA samples (aDNA), disease-specific genomic data, genomic histone marks, chromatin states and motifs, chromosome annotation, evolutionary relationship of human proteins and animal models, analyses of allelic imbalance in clonal cell populations based on sequence polymorphisms. General information on genes, such as orthologs and paralogs, exon, intron and UTRs, gene classification, transcript sequences, protein sequences, mutations and SNPs, transcript cluster or selected publications can also be found. The general input is a Gene Symbol, Chromosomal position or region. The output is presented in browser visualization, tables with the genomic sequence of the interest, gene report, and heatmaps with pathogenicity of the mutations found in a sequence of the gene or region of interest.

LncRNA and miRNA databases

We found 73 tools ( Table S7 ) related to miRNA and long non-conding RNAs (lncRNAs) in different organisms and pathogenic conditions. Of special interest may be data on putative antagomirs-miRNA heterodimers, protein-protein interactions (PPI) and functionally synergistic miRNA pairs (including transcription factors). The input of the search can be a Gene symbol, miRNA or LncRNA ID or target (hsa-let-7a, for example), Fasta file of the region of interest, or chromosomal location (any position in hg38 version, for example). In the case of LncRNA, the output is a table with the basic information of sequence, strand, class (antisense, for example), and conservation across species, with or without prediction scores. For miRNA, the output show information about the seed region, conservation score, accessibility, and secondary structures, minimum free energy estimation, correlations about expression, and start/end of the miRNA sequences. In disease-specific databases, the table may present the disease name, information about causality, and related literature.

Metabolic and enzyme databases

We found 24 tools ( Table 1 ) involving databases with information about potential cleavage sites in datasets of all human proteins collected in Uniprot and their orthologs, allowing for tracing of cleavage motif conservation, bioactive molecules, human metabolites, natural products, patented agents and other molecules. Databases are organized as disease-specific, tissue-specific, organelle-related or by protein families. Epigenetic enzymes and chemical modulators focused on epigenetic therapeutics, as well as functional databases including information from cells and tissues at a variety of physiological conditions, are also available. The input of the analyses is either a GO term, gene symbol or name, chromosomal location, metabolite or molecule name, or enzyme family name. Compartment and subsystem 2D maps, tables with literature related, enzyme domains, Uniprot ID, plots of classic or multivariate ROC curves, and images illustrating predicted small molecules are present in the output.

*Databases present in the case study.

Methylation databases

We found 16 tools ( Table 2 ) related to methylation patterns in aging-related diseases, normal or tumoral tissues, CpG islands and sites, and epigenome-wide studies. Information about the tissue-specific variation of methylation in the human central nervous system and matched blood samples collected from multiple donors are also available. Human cancer-specific DNA methylation, imprinting and gametogenesis-related methylation changes, and associations between RNAs and methylation databases are also available. The input generally is an Entrez ID or Gene Symbol, SNP ID (e.g., rs1001098), Chromosome Location, CpG island ID or the DNA sequence in Fasta file. Also, a target tissue can be informed. The output shows tables with gene and methylated positions, CpG location, and in some cases, the literature related to the study. Some tools show the CpG islands in the genome browser, in a graph with the content of the CpG island region, CpG sites, and the DNA sequence.

Proteome and protein-protein interaction

In this topic, we found 97 databases ( Table S8 ) that investigate the behavior of protein subunits in known complexes by comparing their abundance profiles across cell types, also tools for the identification of protein hydroxylation sites, to classify and score human coding variants based on the probability to damage their protein-related function. Databases of molecular-level putative protein-drug interactions, explorable and interactive human proteome database including MS/MS data, databases of protein interaction information pre-computed from existing structural and experimental data were also found. Fasta protein sequences, or Uniprot and Gene ID, are the input for these tools. Interactions between metabolites and molecules, small compounds, and enzyme’s families and characterization are the output.

Regulatory elements

The 29 databases ( Table 3 ) allow to visualize modified ribosomal nucleotides of human and several major model organisms, present resources to the identification of transcription factors, functional elements, cis-regulatory elements, interferon regulated genes, large intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) and miRNA regulatory cascades in human diseases, Triplex Target DNA Site (TSS) with genomic regulatory sequences and signals, and RNA binding elements. The data is either from text-mining-assisted workflow, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), high-throughput datasets, Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS), next-generation sequencing techniques and/or predicted by computational models with annotations obtained by expert review of the scientific literature. Gene names, accession numbers, Fasta sequences, ligand ID (e.g., G4L0021), ligand name (e.g., TMPyP4), ligand activity or binding properties (e.g., Cytotoxicity), author name of ligand related literature, Ensembl ID List, tissue or cell type are examples of the possible inputs. Databases for Triplex target DNA sites provide specific search criteria, such as percent guanine content and pyrimidine interruption. The result shows a list of genes, tables, venn diagrams, scatter plot, position weight matrix for a selected motif, navigation across the motifs, and heatmaps with the target elements and biosamples.

Other specialized databases

We found 64 databases ( Table S9 ) related to immunogenetics and antigen tumor receptors, genome-wide studies, rare diseases, cell culture, experimental design, genetic traits, and human copy number variations. The immunogenetic databases focus in cytokine receptors, their ligands, their involvement in diseases and their use in clinical treatments, human Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) genes, peptides, predictions, and proteins about human leukocyte antigen (HLA) I and HLA II-restricted peptides, in silico prediction of epitopes, tumor T cell antigens and literature about immunoproteins. Genome-wide databases compiled various public resources dealing with summary-level genome-wide association studies (GWAS) results. Rare disease databases comprehend specialized databases in rare diseases, such as the DECHIPER database, LungMap, and MARRVEL. Cell line databases integrated molecular authentication and identification tools for human and animal cell lines available from some of the main European cell banks, with curated literature. Experimental design databases contain experimental data and results from studies that have investigated the interaction of genotype and phenotype in humans, and CRISPR knockout libraries to target custom subsets of genes in the human or mouse genome. Genetic traits databases contain information about the global distribution of genetic traits. Copy number variations databases provide curated reference databases and bioinformatics resources targeting copy number profiling data in human diseases, especially in cancer. In general, the input is the Gene ID, DNA sequence in a Fasta format, organism, antigen name, haplotype, disease name, or ontology. For immunogenetic databases, the output is epitope sequences with scores, a list of antigens, assays, and receptors with the respective literature reference. Genome-wide databases present tables with the GWAS summarization of the study, SNP id, hits, allelic p-value, genotypic p-value, and Manhattan plot with the significant SNPs. Experimental design databases contain lists and tables with information about disease profiles and conditions with curated literature reviews. Genetic traits databases provide lists with SNP-trait associations in different human populations, and functional regions overlapping with SNPs in high linkage disequilibrium. Also, demographic information such as Country and Ethnicity is displayed within other GWAS information according to GWAS catalog guidelines.

Future and Perspectives

Biological databases are essential to provide information on normal and disease conditions, to search for information about DNA sequences, RNA, protein, and all possible data from different species and animal models. Public user-friendly web-based databases facilitate data mining and the search for information applicable to healthcare professionals. Besides, biological databases are essential to improve biomedical search sensitivity and efficiency and merge multiple datasets needed to share data and build global initiatives for the diagnosis, prognosis, and discovery of new treatments for genetic diseases. Gathering information about primary and secondary biological databases in a single review centralizes the search for recent and easy-to-use bioinformatics tools that can help to address some of the challenges in (Big) Data-driven research.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for the fellowships provided to GCVS (Process no.: 148615/2018-0) and UM (Process no.: 312714/2018-1). We also thank FIPE/HCPA (Project Number 2019-0761) for financial support.

Supplementary material. 

The following online material is available for this article:

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Database Search

What is Database Search?

Harvard Library licenses hundreds of online databases, giving you access to academic and news articles, books, journals, primary sources, streaming media, and much more.

The contents of these databases are only partially included in HOLLIS. To make sure you're really seeing everything, you need to search in multiple places. Use Database Search to identify and connect to the best databases for your topic.

In addition to digital content, you will find specialized search engines used in specific scholarly domains.

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The Knowledge House For Research: Academic Databases Guide

Explore academic databases and craft insightful content with credible sources. Learn about the types, benefits, and top databases.

In the age of information, academic databases have emerged as essential hubs of knowledge. These digital storages have transformed the way researchers, students, and academics access and interact with information. 

This article delves into the world of academic databases , exploring their significance, types, and the benefits they bring to the realms of learning and research. So, let us get started.

What Is An Academic Database? 

An academic database, also known as a scholarly database, is a digital repository or collection of academic resources, research articles, papers, journals, books, conference proceedings, and other scholarly materials that are related to various academic disciplines. These databases serve as centralized platforms for researchers, students, and professionals to access high-quality, peer-reviewed information and conduct academic research.

Popular examples of academic databases include PubMed for medical research, IEEE Xplore for engineering and technology, JSTOR for humanities and social sciences, and Scopus for multidisciplinary research.

Types Of Academic Databases

Academic databases come in various types, each catering to specific academic disciplines or purposes. Here are some common types of academic databases, along with brief explanations for each

Multidisciplinary Databases

These databases cover a wide range of academic fields and include content from various disciplines. They are suitable for general research and exploration across different subject areas.

• PubMed (medicine and life sciences)
• Scopus (multidisciplinary)
• Google Scholar (multidisciplinary)

Subject-Specific Databases

These databases focus on a single academic field or subject area, providing in-depth and specialized content for researchers and students in that particular discipline.

• PsycINFO (psychology)
• ERIC (education)
• MathSciNet (mathematics)

Abstracting And Indexing Databases

These databases do not provide full-text articles but instead offer abstracts, citations, and indexing information for academic publications. Researchers often use them to discover relevant articles and then access the full texts through other means.

• Web of Science (multidisciplinary)
• ProQuest (multidisciplinary)
• INSPEC (physics, engineering)

Full-Text Databases

Full-text databases provide access to complete articles, books, and other scholarly publications within a specific subject area or across multiple disciplines.

• JSTOR (humanities and social sciences)
• IEEE Xplore (engineering and technology)
• ScienceDirect (science and engineering)

Citation Databases

Citation databases focus on tracking citations between academic articles, helping researchers identify influential works, trends, and the impact of their own research.

• Microsoft Academic (multidisciplinary)

Open Access Databases

Open-access databases provide free and unrestricted access to academic content. They promote the sharing of knowledge without paywalls or subscription fees.

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• Public Library of Science (PLOS)
• BioMed Central (BMC)

Also Read: Pros and Cons of Open Access Publishing: Empowering Academics

Each type of academic database serves a unique purpose and audience, enabling researchers, students, and academics to access relevant scholarly information within their specific areas of interest or study.

Benefits Of Using Academic Databases

Using academic databases offers several benefits to researchers, students, and academics. These databases are valuable tools for accessing high-quality scholarly information and conducting research. Here are some of the key benefits of using academic databases:

Access to High-Quality Information

Academic databases contain peer-reviewed and reputable sources, ensuring the reliability and credibility of the information available. Researchers can trust the accuracy of the content they find.

Efficient Searching

Databases provide advanced search features, such as keyword searches, filters, and Boolean operators, which allow users to refine their searches and find relevant information quickly.

Comprehensive Coverage

Many academic databases cover a wide range of topics and disciplines, providing access to a diverse array of scholarly materials, including research articles, books, thesis, and more.

Time Savings

Researchers can save time by using databases instead of manually searching through numerous journals and publications. Databases compile relevant materials in one place, streamlining the research process.

Citation Assistance

Databases often include citation information for each article or publication, making it easier for researchers to properly cite their sources in their own work, which is crucial for academic integrity.

Current and Historical Content

Databases offer access to both current research and historical publications, allowing researchers to trace the development of ideas and track changes in a particular field over time.

Interdisciplinary Research

Multidisciplinary databases enable researchers to explore connections between different academic disciplines, fostering interdisciplinary research and innovation.

Remote Access

Many academic institutions provide remote access to their databases, allowing students and researchers to access materials from anywhere with an internet connection.

Types of Academic Resources Available in Academic Databases

Academic databases offer a wide variety of academic resources that cater to the needs of researchers, students, and academics. These resources encompass different formats and types of content to support various aspects of scholarly work. Here are some common types of academic resources available in academic databases:

Research Articles

• These are scholarly articles published in academic journals.
• They typically present original research findings, methodologies, and discussions of academic topics.
• Research articles undergo peer review before publication to ensure quality and validity.

Conference Papers And Proceedings

• These include papers presented at academic conferences and the proceedings of those conferences.
• They often contain the latest research findings and innovations in a particular field.

Books And Book Chapters

• Academic databases may provide access to full books or individual chapters from academic books.
• Books offer in-depth coverage of topics and serve as comprehensive references.

Thesis and Dissertations

• These are research documents submitted by graduate students as part of their degree requirements.
• Thesis and dissertations often contain original research and contribute to the scholarly discourse in a specific field.

Reports and Whitepapers

• These documents are often published by research institutions, government agencies, or organizations.
• Reports and whitepapers provide detailed analysis, data, and recommendations on various topics.

Reviews and Commentaries

• These articles offer critical assessments, critiques, or commentary on existing research or academic topics.
• Reviews can help researchers understand the state of knowledge in a particular area.

Reference Materials

• Academic databases may include reference materials like dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks.
• These resources provide definitions, explanations, and overviews of academic concepts and topics.

These types of academic resources collectively support research, teaching, and learning across a wide range of academic disciplines and are vital for advancing knowledge in various fields.

In conclusion, academic databases serve as indispensable tools in the world of education and research. They provide a vast and organized collection of scholarly resources, offering researchers, students, and academics quick and reliable access to the wealth of human knowledge. 

Related Article: The Academic Success Blueprint That Helps You Thrive And Shine

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Sowjanya is a passionate writer and an avid reader. She holds MBA in Agribusiness Management and now is working as a content writer. She loves to play with words and hopes to make a difference in the world through her writings. Apart from writing, she is interested in reading fiction novels and doing craftwork. She also loves to travel and explore different cuisines and spend time with her family and friends.

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How to efficiently search online databases for academic research

How to access academic databases

How to search academic databases, 1. use the campus network to access research databases, 2. find databases that are specifically related to your topic, 3. set up the search parameters within a database to be as narrow as possible, 4. ask a librarian for help, 5. slowly expand your search to get additional results, 6. use the pro features of the database, 7. try a more general database, if needed, 8. keep track of seminal works, frequently asked questions about searching online databases, related articles.

University libraries provide access to plenty of online academic databases that can yield good results when you use the right strategies. They are among the best sources to turn to when you need to find articles from scholarly journals, books, and other periodicals.

Searching an online research database is much like searching the internet, but the hits returned will be scholarly articles and other academic sources, depending on the subject. In this guide, we highlight 8 tips for searching academic databases.

• Use college and university library networks.
• Search subject-specific databases.
• Set up search parameters.
• Ask a librarian for help.
• Narrow or broaden your search, as needed.
• Use the pro features, where applicable.
• Try a more general database.
• Keep track of seminal works.

Tip: The best practice is to use the links provided on your library's website to access academic databases.

Most academic databases cannot be accessed for free. As authoritative resources, these multi-disciplinary databases are comprehensive collections of the current literature on a broad range of topics. Because they have a huge range of publications, public access is sometimes restricted.

College and university libraries pay for subscriptions to popular academic databases. As a student, staff, or faculty member, you can access these resources from home thanks to proxy connections.

➡️ Check out our list of EZProxy connections to see if your institution provides such a service.

Tip: Searching the right databases is key to finding the right academic journals.

Around 2.5 million articles are published EACH year. As a result, it's important to search the right database for the reference you need. Comprehensive databases often contain subject-specific resources and filters and these will help you narrow down your search results. Otherwise, you will have to screen too many unrelated papers that won't give you the reference you want.

Ask a librarian or check your library's A-Z resource list to find out which databases you can access. If you do not know where to start, you can check out the three biggest academic database providers:

➡️ Take a look at our compilations of research databases for computer science or healthcare .

Unlike in a Google search, typing in full sentences will not bring you satisfactory results. Some strategies for narrowing search parameters include:

• Narrowing your search terms in order to get the most pertinent information from the scholarly resources you are reviewing
• Narrowing results by filters like specific date range or source type
• Using more specific keywords

If your university library has a subject specialist in your field, you may want to contact them for guidance on keywords and other subject- and database-specific search strategies. Consider asking a librarian to meet you for a research consultation.

A specific search might not return as many results. This can be good because these results will most likely be current and applicable. If you do not get enough results, however, slowly expand the:

• type of journal

From there, you'll be able to find a wider variety of related technical reports, books, academic journals, and other potential results that you can use for your research.

Academic search engines and databases are getting smart! In the age of big data and text mining, many databases crunch millions of scientific papers to extract connections between them. Watch out for things like:

• related relevant articles
• similar academic resources
• list of "cited by" or "citations"
• list of references

When you have thoroughly finished searching a comprehensive database, you can move on to another to find more results. Some databases that cover the same topics might give you the same search results, but they might also cover an entire range of different journals or online resources.

You might prefer the search system of one database over another based on the results you get from keyword searches. One database might have more advanced search options than the other. You can also try a more general database like:

• Web Of Science

➡️ Visit our list of the best academic research databases .

There are experts in every field, people who have published a lot of scholarly content on your topic, people who get quoted or interviewed a lot and seem to be present almost everywhere. Pay attention to those names when searching a database and once you have found someone interesting, you can search for more from that person.

Also, take note of seminal articles, or those works that have been cited repeatedly within your field. Many major databases for academic journals have features that allow you to quickly determine which articles are cited most frequently.

➡️ Ready to start writing your paper? Visit our guide on how to start a research paper .

Your institution's library provides access to plenty of online research databases. They are among the best sources to turn to when you need to find articles from scholarly journals and periodicals.

Searching the right databases is key to finding the right articles. Ask a librarian or check your library's website to access details. If you do not know where to start, check out the three biggest academic database providers:

Or take a look at our compilation of research database for computer science or healthcare .

You can narrow your search by only including articles within a specific date range or unchecking certain types of journals or magazines that are included in the database but have nothing to do with your topic. Make sure to also use very specific keywords when searching.

Unlike in a Google search, typing in full sentences will not bring you satisfactory results. There are different methods to search different databases. Ask a librarian or do an internet search on how to best search your particular database.

Narrowing down a search might not return many results. If you do not get enough results, slowly expand the date range, type of journal, or keywords.

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201 Online Research Databases and Search Engines

Whether you are conducting extensive research for an academic program or simply interested in learning more about the world around you, online databases and search engines are a great way to study from the comfort of your home or dorm. That's why we've compiled a list of 202 websites and databases to help you do just that. While some require subscription or a library membership, many are open access, allowing you to find the data and information you need absolutely free of charge.

Business and Economics

Humanities, social sciences, anthropology, religion and philosophy, mathematics and computer science, multidisciplinary, engineering and agriculture, science and medicine, military studies, education, linguistics and law.

• BPubs —BPubs is a search engine to access business and trade publications.
• EconBiz —EconBiz focuses on economic and business studies, offering searches of all free access journals and open access material. Provided by the ZBW - German National Library of Economics, a part of the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, the database opened in 2002 as the Virtual Library for Economics and Business Studies.
• EconLit —This is a collection of 120+ years of economic research spearheaded by the American Economic Association. Focusing on literature in the field of economics, EconLit contains academic sources dating back to 1969.
• EconStor —EconStor is a non-commercial public server by the ZBM with a large collection of economic literature, including 167,526 full texts. In contains open access full-text versions of working papers, journal articles and conference proceedings, all of which authors and editors can submit free of charge.
• EDGAR Search —EDGAR Search is a searchable database offered by The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Its purpose is to provide information and access to more than 21 million findings relating to SEC filings published, including operations and financial information searchable by company name.
• IDEAS —IDEAS claims to be the largest bibliographic database dedicated to Economics that is available for free on the Internet. It is a volunteer effort to increase free dissemination of research in Economics and uses RePEc data. Authors who submit their work receive a monthly tally of its popularity, including its ranking on the database.
• Inomics —Inomics is a search tool for jobs and academic programs in disciplines such as Economics, Business, Finance, Management and Marketing. You can also search by subject and curate a newsfeed of articles related to these disciplines.
• National Bureau of Economic Research —The National Bureau of Economic Research offers this searchable database of working papers, books, chapters from books in progress, and other free publications related to research in Economics. Topics include themes such as: Africa, Charter Schools, Childhood Interventions, China's Economy, Commodity, Prices, Developments in the European Economy, Energy, Entrepreneurship, Immigration and Innovation, Inequality, International Capital Flows, Productivity and Growth, and Taxation.
• Research Papers in Economics —Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative, volunteer project boasting archives containing 2.6 million research pieces from 3,000 journals and 4,600 working papers. Its purpose is to increase the dissemination of economic research.

• AgeLine —The AgeLine database is a subscription-based online resource for gerontology research, and research relating to topics of aging. It is ideal for health organizations, government entities, and nursing service providers.
• AllMusic —AllMusic is an online database cataloging more than 3 million albums and 30 million tracks. It also offers extensive information relating to bands and/or individual artists.
• Anthropological Index Online —The Anthropological Index Online (AIO) is a service of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) and supported by the Anthropology Library and Research Centre at the British Museum. It boasts approximately 4,000 periodical titles with content from various branches of anthropology, along with 800 journals, published in more than 40 languages.
• Anthropological Literature —This subscription-based database offers indexing for anthropology and archaeology, including social and cultural anthropology, Old and New World archaeology, and physical anthropology.
• Artcyclopedia —Artcylopedia is a database listing information about 9,000 artists and 2,900 art sites, and provides 160,000 links relative to the art world. It is searchable by artist, artwork, or museum location.
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index —The Arts & Humanities Citation Index offers abstracts and indexing of 1,700+ journals published in the arts and humanities. With multiple subject categories, such as cultural studies, literature, and theater, the database is searchable by category or specific journal title.
• ATLA Religion Database® —The ATLA Religion Database (ATLA RDB) is a subscription-based index, with journal articles, book reviews, and essays related to religion or religious studies. Published by the American Theological Library, the database contains 2.1 million article citations from over 1,940+ journals, along with over half a million book reviews.
• Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index —Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index is based in China and developed by Nanjing University. It contains about 500 Chinese academic journals in the humanities and social sciences, and is used as basis for the evaluation of academic promotion among several universities.
• Encyclopedia of Psychology —The Encyclopedia of Psychology is provided by Psych Central and offers links to various psychology topics and resources. It provides information on psychological conditions, tests, blogs and podcasts, clinical trials, academic resources, and forums and support groups.
• Inspire —INSPIRE's main goal is to provide a repository for spatial information throughout Europe. This EU initiative seeks help to make spatial or geographical information accessible for those working in various stages of land development.
• International Aging Research Portfolio —International Aging Research Portfolio (IARP) contains an open-access directory for grants, publications, and academic conferences in social and behavioral sciences. It also provides search and visual trend analysis tools for topics related to aging research.
• International Directory of Philosophy —With over 37,000 listings, the International Directory of Philosophy database, established by the Philosophy Documentation Center in 2010, provides information on university philosophy departments, research centers, professional societies, journals, and philosophy.
• L'Année philologique — L'Année philologique (The Philological Year) is a subscription-based database containing bibliography information for scholarly works in language, literature, history and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. The print version has been in publication since 1928.
• Library of Anglo-American Culture & History —The Library of Anglo-American Culture & History, funded by the German Research Foundation, offers access to journals, newspapers, and databases in English Studies, American Studies, Canadian Studies, and Australian and New Zealand studies.
• Literary Encyclopedia —The Literary Encyclopedia is a subscription-based database that publishes biographies of major and minor writers, as well as critical essays on literature, culture, and history.
• National Criminal Justice Reference Service —The National Criminal Justice Reference Service offers this database through funding by the U.S. government. It is focused on content related to criminal justice and is a resource for law enforcement, policymakers, practitioners, and researchers. With its expansive collection of reports, books, research, and unpublished research, it is also valuable to educators, community leaders, and the general public.
• OpenEdition.org —OpenEdition offers a searchable database of books and journals in the humanities and social sciences. Many are free access, along with services provided by libraries and subscribing institutions.
• Open Library of Humanities —Open Library of Humanities is a registered charity in England and Wales and contains a searchable database of open access journals in the humanities.
• PhilPapers —PhilPapers is a searchable database and bibliography of philosophy that is maintained by the community of philosophers. It includes various content in philosophy, including journals, books, open access archives, and personal pages, with 2,429,107 entries categorized in 5,408 categories.
• Philosophy Research Index —The Philosophy Research Index offers bibliographic information on articles, books, reviews, dissertations, and other documents related to the field of philosophy. It includes over 1.34 million bibliographic records in 30 languages.
• POPLINE —POPLINE provides free access to 380,000 publications and resources related to family planning and reproductive health, including many full-text copies.
• Project MUSE —Project MUSE provides complete, full-text versions of scholarly journals. It contains over 674 journals from 125 publishers and offers over 50,000 books from more than 100 presses.
• Psychology's Feminist Voices —Psychology's Feminist Voices (PFV) is a digital archive of past and contemporary feminist psychologists who have contributed to psychological research. It contains biographical profiles, oral history interview transcripts, video content, timelines, bibliographies, teaching resources, and an original 40-minute documentary on the current status of feminist psychology in the United States.
• PsycINFO —PsycINFO, supported by the American Psychological Association, offers a searchable database containing abstracts and citations of literature that has been published in the field of psychology.
• PubPsych —PubPsych is a searchable, open access database containing psychology-related resources. Users can search in English, Spanish, French and German.
• Questia —Questia is an online research and paper writing resource with more than 94,000 online books. It also includes organizational and paper-writing tools to help manage research and automatically generate footnotes and bibliographies.
• Rock's Backpages —Rock's Backpages is a subscription-based database that contains full-text articles that are freelance contributions to the music and mainstream press. It contains over 37,000 articles, including features, reviews, and 600 audio interviews with musicians.
• Social Science Citation Index —Provided by Clarivate Analytics, the Social Science Citation Index contains approximately 3,000 leading academic journals across more than 50 disciplines.
• Social Science Research Network —The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) offers 837,220 research papers from 416,090 researchers across 30 disciplines.
• SocioSite —SocioSite is maintained by the University of Amsterdam and contains research related to sociological subjects, including activism, culture, peace, and racism.
• SocioWeb —SocioWeb is a searchable database containing including websites, online directories, articles, surveys and statistics, and journals related to the study of sociology. It also contains links to sociological associations.
• State Legislative Websites Directory —The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) contains information gathered from the home pages and websites of the 50 state legislatures, the District of Columbia and the territories. Researchers can view bills, press rooms, and statutes from each state.
• The Women's Library —The Women's Library is part of the London School of Economics and Political Science. It offers an online database of journals, articles, and cross-domain printed material, archives and 3D objects relating to women's history.
• University of Oxford Text Archive —The Oxford Text Archive offers a searchable database of literary and linguistic resources for use in research and teaching. It is part of the CLARIN European Research Infrastructure and is part of the University of Oxford's contribution to the CLARIN-UK Consortium.
• U.S. Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive —U.S. Metropolitan Travel Survey Archive is funded by The United States Department of Transportation and provides free access to travel surveys conducted by cities, states and localities.
• VET-Bib —VET-Bib is a database offering bibliographic information for European vocational education and training (VET) literature and is maintained by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop).
• WikiArc —WikiArc is a search tool for professionals, students and researchers interested in the fields of archaeology, classical antiquity, paleoanthropology, forensic anthropology, cultural heritage studies, and Quaternary sciences.

• 2arXiv e-print Archive —Offered by Cornell University Library, arXiv.org is an open access database, allowing users to search for 1,480,478 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, Statistics, Electrical Engineering and Systems Science, and Economics.
• Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library —The ACM Digital Library offers a searchable database of full-text Collection ACM publications, including journals, conference proceedings, technical magazines, newsletters and books.
• Citebase Search —Citebase is the product of a collaboration between Opcit Project and the Open Archives Initiative. It is a cross-archive search engine that provides links to research paper bibliographies, along with generating citation analysis and navigation over the e-print literature.
• CiteSeerX —CiteSeerx offers a searchable database and digital library of scientific literature focused primarily on computer and information science. It also provides resources such as algorithms, data, metadata, services, techniques, and software.
• Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies —This searchable database offers bibliographies of computer science literature and contains more than 7 million references to journal articles, conference papers and technical reports in the field of computer science.
• Computer Science Technical Reports —As a service offered by the computer science department of Virginia Tech, Computer Science Technical Reports is collection of computer science technical reports from CS departments and industrial and government research laboratories around the world.
• dblp computer science bibliography —This searchable database offers open access bibliographic information academic journals within the computer science field. It is run by the University of Trier and Schloss Dagstuhl.
• HCI Bibliography —The HCI Bibliography offers access to bibliographies, weblogs, columns, news, and developer resources related to human-computer interaction.
• IEEE Xplore —Along with material published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the IEEE Xplore database provides access to more than 4.5-million documents related to the fields of computer science, electrical engineering, electronics. Full-text documents require a subscription.
• Inspec —Inspec is run by the Institution of Engineering and Technology and provides access to 17 million abstracts in the fields of physics and engineering.
• MathGuide —The MathGuide offers links to all core areas of mathematics, with the goal to index and catalog quality math resources and scholarly links.
• The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies —The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies offers more than 7 million bibliographies (mostly to journal articles, conference papers and technical reports) of scientific literature in computer science from various sources, covering most aspects of computer science.
• zbMATH —zbMath is a searchable database for finding documents, authors, and journals related to mathematics. While some are open access, others require payment.

• Academic Index —The Academic Index is a meta-search tool that indexes research-quality reference and information sources selected by professional librarians, educators, and educational and library consortia. It currently provides access to over 300,000 web pages.
• Academic Search —Provided by EBSCO Publishing, the Academic Search database is a subscription-based research database providing access to peer-reviewed, full-text journals.
• African Journals OnLine —African Journals OnLine (AJOL) offers access to peer-reviewed, African-published scholarly journals. Users can browse peer-reviewed journals from Africa, download full-text articles from journal homepages, and search for an article by title, author/s or keywords.
• Airiti Inc —The Airiti Library provides a search platform in Chinese that features full-text academic journal articles, doctoral dissertations, and conference paper compilations.
• Archives Hub —Archives Hub offers access to archives in over 300 institutions around Scotland, England, and Wales, providing links to digital content when available.
• BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine —Created and run by the Bielefeld University Library, BASE harvests metadata from institutional and other academic digital libraries. It offers over 120 million documents from across over 6000 sources with an easy-to-use search engine.
• Book Review Index Online —Book Review Index Online offers access to book reviews from 1965 to the present published in nearly 500 periodicals and newspapers. You will need a New York Public Library card to access it free of charge.
• Books in Print —Books in Print is a subscription-based service providing bibliographic information on published works to the book trade, including publishers, booksellers, libraries, and individuals.
• Catalog of U.S. Government Publications —The CGP offers access to federal publications, including direct links to the full document, when available. Users can search by authoring agency, title, subject, and general keywords, or click on "Advanced Search" for more options.
• CIA World Factbook —The World Factbook offers a searchable database on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 countries and locales around the world. References tools also available are maps of the major world regions, Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, a World Oceans map, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map.
• CiNii —CiNii (pronounced like "sigh-knee") is an open-access database offering access to articles, Books, Journals and Dissertations. It also includes university research bulletins or articles from the National Diet Library's Japanese Periodicals Index Database.
• CiteULike —CiteULike provides free access, allowing users to store and share scholarly papers. The site extracts citations automatically from stored papers.
• CogPrints —CogPrints is an an electronic archive for papers in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Linguistics, Computer Science, Philosophy, Biology, Medicine, and Anthropology.
• CORE —CORE aggregates all open-access research from academic journals and entities worldwide, with the mission of making them available to the public.
• De Gruyter Open —De Gruyter is an academic publisher of open access books, with more than 1000 open access books available on the website. Authors can also publish open access, although all publications are subject to peer review.
• Digital Library of the Commons Repository —The DLC offers free and open access to articles (some full text), papers, and dissertations. There is also an author-submission portal; an Image Database; the Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons; and a Keyword Thesaurus.
• Directory of Open Access Journals —DOAJ is an online directory that is community curated and indexed to provide open access to peer-reviewed journals across multiple fields and topics.
• EBSCO Open Dissertations —EBSCO Open Dissertations is a free database with more than 800,000 electronic theses and dissertations submitted globally.
• EThOS —EThOS aims to improve the availability of doctoral research theses in the UK, making publicly-funded research freely available for all researchers.
• Genamics JournalSeek —Genamics JournalSeek is a categorized database of freely available journal information, and currently contains information for 39,226 titles across disciplines. This information includes the journal's aims and scope, journal abbreviation, journal homepage link, subject category and ISSN.
• GeoRef —Created by the American Geosciences Institute in 1966, the GeoRef database provides access to geoscience via a bibliographic database in the geosciences. It currently contains over 3.9 million references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses.
• Google Books —Google Books allows users to search through millions of books available online. If permission has been given, users can read the full text.
• Google Correlate —Google Correlate is a part of Google Trends, allowing the user to submit a query for finding similar patterns to a target data series. Think of it as Google Trends in reverse.
• Google Scholar —Google Scholar allows broad searches for academic literature across multiple disciplines, including articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions.
• Google Trends —Google Trends offers searches that show how frequently a given search term is entered into Google's search engine relative to total search volume over a given period of time. It also provides geographical information about search engine users.
• Indian Citation Index —The Indian Citation Index (ICI) database offers access to approximately 1000 top Indian scholarly journals across the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
• Infotopia —Infotopia is an academic search engine that is curated by librarians, teachers and other educational workers.
• Ingenta —The Ingenta Connect portal is a subscription-based content management system that hosts more than 5 million articles and 16,000 publications from 350 publishers.
• International Medieval Bibliography —The International Medieval Bibliography (IMB) is a subscription-based database that offers current bibliographies of articles in journals related to Classics, English Language and Literature, History and Archaeology, Theology and Philosophy, Medieval European Languages and Literatures, Arabic and Islamic Studies, History of Education, Art History, Music, Theatre and Performance Arts, Rhetoric and Communication Studies.
• iSEEK Education —iSEEK Education is a search engine that compiles thousands of authoritative resources from university and government sources.
• J-Gate —J-Gate allows users to access global e-journal literature, including 10 Million full-text articles from 49,000+ journals covering Agriculture and biological Sciences, Arts and humanities, Basic Sciences, Biomedical Sciences, Engineering and Technology, and Social and Management Sciences.
• JSTOR —JSTOR provides access for researchers and students to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources across 75 disciplines.
• JURN —JURN provides an academic search-engine, indexing 3,952 free e-journals in the arts and humanities.
• Library of Congress —The U.S. Library of Congress Online Catalog provides access to dozens of recommended free databases, indexing and abstracting services, and full-text reference resources in the Arts and Humanities, Law, News and Current Events, Regional and Cultural Studies, Science and Technology, and Social Sciences.
• Mendeley —Mendeley allows researchers to add papers directly from their browser and generate references, citations and bibliographies across various formats. Researchers can also share ideas and discover new research in their field.
• Microsoft Academic Search —Microsoft Academic Search allows users to search for papers and provides related information about the most relevant authors, institutions, publication outlets, and research areas through a semantic search capability.
• National Archives —The National Archives provides a searchable archival database for U.S. government and veterans records, along with America's Founding documents, Educators' resources, and war records.
• OAIster —The OAIster database provides millions of records from open access resources, and was built through harvesting from worldwide open access collections using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).
• OpenDOAR —OpenDOAR is a global directory of academic repositories that are open access, enabling users to identify, browse, and search for repositories.
• OpenSIGLE —OpenSIGLE offers open access to 700,000 bibliographical references, including technical or research reports, doctoral dissertations, conference papers, official publications, and other types of grey literature.
• Oxford Academic Journals —Oxford Academic is a service provided by Oxford University Press, publishing more than 200 open-access academic journals.
• Paperity —Paperity is a multi-disciplinary aggregator of open-access journals, giving readers easy access to thousands of journals from hundreds of disciplines, in one central location. It includes scholarly communication in all research fields, from Sciences, Technology, Medicine, to Social Sciences, to Humanities and Arts.
• Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890–1982 —Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 is a subscription-based index of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines including full coverage of the original print volumes of Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature.
• Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature —Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature is a subscription-based index covering topics in art, business, education and entertainment.
• RefSeek —Refseek is a search engine that pulls from over one billion web pages, encyclopedias, journals and books, providing easy access to PDFs of academic papers.
• ResearchGate —ResearchGate is part publication index/part networking site for scientists and researchers. It offers free access to over 15 million members from all over the world to share, discover, and discuss research.
• SafetyLit —SafetyLit offers indexed reports from researchers who work in disciplines related to preventing and researching unintentional injuries, violence, and self-harm. These include agriculture, anthropology, architecture, economics, education, engineering specialties, ergonomics and human factors, faith scholars, health and medicine, law and law enforcement, psychology, social work, sociology, and other fields.
• Scientific Electronic Library Online —SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) is an open-access bibliographic database, digital library, and cooperative electronic publishing model for journals. It is available in English, Portuguese and Spanish.
• SCIndeks —SCIndeks is a hybrid open-access and subscription-based database containing metadata and citation data for scientific publishing in Serbia, including some full-text articles.
• Scopus —Scopus is the largest subscription-based abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, including scientific journals, books and conference proceedings.
• SearchTeam.com —SearchTeam is a collaborative search engine that allows you to conduct searches along with your friends, colleagues and coworkers.
• Smithsonian Institution Research Information System —The Smithsonian Collections Search Center is an online database offering access to most of the major collections from Smithsonian museums, archives, libraries, and research units. It contains 13.5 million catalog records in Art & Design, History & Culture, and Science & Technology with over 3.1 million images, videos, audio files, podcasts, blog posts and electronic journals.
• Socolar —Socolar is a searchable database containing open-access content from journals in Agriculture and Food Sciences, Arts and Architecture, Biology and Life Sciences, Business and Economics, Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Sciences, General Works, Health Sciences, History and Archaeology, Languages and Literatures, Law and Political Science, Mathematics and Statistics, Philosophy and Religion, Physics and Astronomy, Science, Social Sciences, Technology and Engineering, and Library and Information Science.
• Sparrho —Sparrho combines human and artificial intelligence to complement traditional methods of finding academic material.
• The British Library Catalogues & Digital Collections —The British Library offers multiple digital collections, including digitized manuscripts, sounds online, the endangered archives programme, and the British newspaper archive (among others).
• Ulrichsweb —Ulrichsweb is a subscription-based database that helps librarians and subscribers avoid gathering serials information in bits and pieces from multiple sources, and brings together the latest bibliographic and provider details in one location.
• Virtual Learning Resources Center —The Virtual Learning Resources Center (VLRC) hosts thousands of scholarly websites selected by teachers and librarians from around the world.
• Wiley Online Library —The Wiley Online Library hosts one of the world's most extensive multidisciplinary, open-access collections of online resources covering life, health and physical sciences, social science, and the humanities. It contains over 4 million articles from 1,500 journals, 9,000 books, and hundreds of multi-volume reference works, laboratory protocols and databases.
• Wolfram Alpha —Wolfram Alpha is a computational knowledge engine that provides answers for questions across a wide range of disciplines and knowledge.
• WorldCat —WorldCat is the world's largest network offering access to library content and services. Some resources may require library membership to access.
• Zenodo —Zenodo is a shared research database featuring topics in the Sciences and Humanities. Users can also create and curate communities for a workshop, project, department, journal, or digital repository.

• Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields —This site offers information on vanished or abandoned U.S. airfields and their unusual histories, searchable by state.
• Aerospace & High Technology Database —This database requires Princeton University or ProQuest authentication to access. It covers all aspects of applied research in the aerospace and space sciences, providing indexing and abstracts from periodicals, conference papers, trade journals, magazines, books, patents and technical reports dating back to the early 1960s.
• AGRICOLA: Agricultural Online Access —Run by the United States Department of Agriculture, this database is produced by the National Agricultural Library (NAL) and consists of two subsets of records: the first, including citations for journal articles that include abstracts; and the second, including bibliographic records describing monographs, serials, audiovisual materials and online content from around the world.
• AGRIS —Run by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, AGRIS offers a searchable database of papers, data, statistics, and multimedia material related to Agricultural Science and Technology Information.
• ASCE Library —The ASCE Library offers a searchable database of civil engineering content, with articles from ASCE journals, papers from conference proceedings, and e-books and standards compiled by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
• CAB Abstracts —CAB Abstracts is a subscription-based international bibliographic database focusing on agricultural literature and containing over 9.1 million records (from 1973 onward). It contains subjects relating to agriculture, environment, forestry, veterinary sciences, applied economics, food science, nutrition, and allied disciplines in the life sciences.
• Civil Engineering Database —Run by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Civil Engineering Database offers an open-access bibliographic database for all ASCE publications including journals, conference proceedings, books, standards, manuals, magazines, and newspapers related to civil engineering.
• Ei Compendex —Ei Compendex is subscription-based and claims to be the broadest and most complete engineering literature database available in the world, providing peer reviewed and indexed publications with over 20 million records from 77 countries across 190 engineering disciplines.
• FSTA – Food Science and Technology Abstracts —This subscription-based database covers literature on every aspect of the food chain, including biotechnology, microbiology, food safety, additives, nutrition, packaging and pet foods.
• National Agricultural Library: Ag Data Commons Beta —The National Agricultural Library's Ag Data Commons Beta offers online access to open data relevant to agricultural research, including agronomy, genomics, hydrology, soils, agro-ecosystems, sustainability science, and economic statistics.
• National Agricultural Library: PubAg —The National Agricultural Library's PubAg offers online access to 82,670 full-text journal articles on the agricultural sciences.

• Analytical Sciences Digital Library —The Analytical Sciences Digital Library (ASDL) is funded by NSF's National Science Digital Library (NSDL) program and is a database containing peer reviewed innovations in curricular development and supporting technical resources in the analytical sciences.
• Analytical Abstracts —Analytical Abstracts keeps users up to date regarding recent developments in analytical science, with a searchable updates that consists of article abstracts and details of analyte, matrix and technique.
• Astrophysics Data System —The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a searchable database for researchers in Astronomy and Physics, and is maintained by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. It contains three bibliographic databases comprised of more than 14.2 million records covering publications in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and the arXiv e-prints.
• Behavioral and Brain Sciences —Behavioral and Brain Sciences is a database containing psychology and brain science articles.
• Beilstein database —The Beilstein database is a subscription-based database of organic chemistry compounds, with over 6,000,000 structures and about 5,000,000 reactions. It is advertised as being the largest database in the field of organic chemistry.
• Bioline International —Bioline is maintained by librarians and researchers, and provides a platform for the distribution of peer-reviewed journals in bioscience. Its content is currently from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda and Venezuela.
• Biological Abstracts —Biological Abstracts is a subscription-based database containing a collection of bibliographic references for life science and biomedical research literature.
• BioMed Central —BioMed Central is an open-access, searchable database with an evolving portfolio of high-quality peer-reviewed journals in topics pertaining to biology, physical sciences, mathematics and engineering disciplines.
• BioOne —BioOne is a nonprofit publisher providing libraries with cost-effective access to high-quality, curated research in science.
• CancerData —CancerData.org offers open-access data related to cancer research.
• CAplus —CAplus is a subscription-based integrated source of journal articles and patent documents in biomedical sciences, chemistry, engineering, materials science, agricultural science and more.
• CAS Registry —CAS Registry is a database of inorganic and organic substances including minerals, compounds, alloys, mixtures, polymers, and salts. It is used primarily to identify unknown chemical substances using information about names and chemical structure of substances.
• CERN Document Server —The CERN Document Servicer is an open-access database offering a digital collection of particle physics and accelerator physics preprints, articles, journals, photographs and more, from the CERN research center.
• CHBD: Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database —The Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database (CHBD) is a project of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Team in Circumpolar Health Research. It is a free electronic database containing 7900 records describing publications about all aspects of human health in the circumpolar region.
• ChemBioFinder —ChemBioFinder is a free database containing data, articles and research related to Chemistry.
• Chemisches Zentralblatt —Chemisches Zentralblatt is the first and oldest abstracts journal published in the field of chemistry, covering chemical literature from 1830 to 1969.
• CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature) —The CINAHL is a subscription-based database offering fast and easy full-text access to top journals, evidence-based care sheets, quick lessons and more in the fields of Nursing and Allied Health.
• Cochrane Library —The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) is a database offering systematic reviews in health care.
• Current Contents – Science Edition —Current Contents is a subscription-based database that provides access to tables of contents, bibliographic information, and abstracts from issues of leading scholarly journals in Life Sciences; Clinical Medicine; Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Sciences; Engineering, Technology, and Applied Sciences; and Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences.
• Dryad —Dryad is an open repository for data whose vision is to promote a world where research data is openly available, integrated with the scholarly literature, and routinely re-used to create knowledge.
• Elsevier Open Access Journals —Elsevier Open Access Journals provides articles in open-access, Elsevier-published journals that have undergone peer review and are permanently free for everyone to read and download.
• EMBASE for Excerpta Medica database —Embase is a biomedical and pharmacological bibliographic database to search and access published literature for complying with the regulatory requirements of a licensed drug.
• Europe PMC —Europe PMC is a repository, providing access to articles in life sciences, as well as books, patents and clinical guidelines.
• Global Health —The Global Health database is subscription-based, and focused on research related to community and international health.
• Global Health Archive —Global Health Archive is a database for researchers interested in public health and biomedical studies produced between 1910 and 1983. It includes over 800,000 records and provides data related to communicable diseases, nutrition, entomology, helminthology, and mycology.
• Golm Metabolome Database —The Golm Metabolome Database (GMD) allows users to search for and disseminate information on mass spectra from biologically active metabolites quantified using gas chromatography (GC) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS).
• HighWire —HighWire offers links to several online journals in the sciences, many of which are open access.
• HubMed —HubMed is an alternative, third-party interface to PubMed, a database offering bibliographical information for biomedical literature produced by the National Library of Medicine.
• IARP —The IARP offers a searchable database for literature and research on aging studies for research investigators, health care policy makers, government officials, interest groups and the general public.
• Index Copernicus —Index Copernicus is a database containing user-contributed information in the sciences, including scientist profiles, scientific institutions, publications and research projects.
• MathSciNet —MathSciNet is a searchable database of reviews, abstracts and bibliographic information for mathematical sciences literature. The database contains almost 3 million items and over 1.7 million direct links to original articles.
• MEDLINE —MEDLINE provides bibliographical information, journal citations and abstracts for globally produced biomedical literature.
• MedlinePlus —MedlinePlus offers searchable information on the latest treatments, drugs or supplements, and links to the latest medical research and clinical trials.
• The Merck Index Online —The Merck Index Online provides a searchable database of medication by compound names, chemical structures, physical and biological activity and properties.
• Meteorological & Geoastrophysical Abstracts —Meteorological & Geoastrophysical Abstracts (MGA) provides a searchable database of literature covering topics in meteorology, climatology, atmospheric chemistry and physics, astrophysics, hydrology, glaciology, physical oceanography and environmental sciences.
• MyScienceWork —MyScienceWork's open-access feature allows users to search across 8,000 full-text documents in the field of science.
• OASIS —The Open Access Series of Imaging Studies (OASIS) provides free neuroimaging data sets of the brain to the scientific community.
• Organic Research Database —This website is a database of abstracts dealing with scientific research involving organic agriculture. It can only be accessed through a subscription.
• OSTI.gov: Department of Energy Scientific and Technical Information —OSTI.GOV is run by the U.S. Department of Energy and offers a searchable database for science, technology, and engineering.
• PolarisOS —PolarisOS is a scientific database including over 70 million scientific publications. It is designed to help scientists of all disciplines access and deposit scientific publications.
• PubChem —PubChem is a National Institute of Health open database for Chemistry. It is designed to help scientists and the public access information about chemical structure, chemical/physical properties, identifiers, patents, biological activities and safety.
• Public Library of Science —The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit scientific publishing and advocacy website with over 215,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles. The free articles span the subjects of Biology, Genetics, Pathogens, Medicine, and Tropical Diseases and can be redistributed.
• PubMed —Pubmed is a collection of more than 29 million biomedical citations from online books, MEDLINE, and journals of life science. Some citations have links to full articles.
• Retina —This journal features the latest information concerning vitreoretinal disorders, focusing on therapeutic and diagnostic techniques. It features full review articles twelve times a year.
• Russian Science Citation Index —Russian Science Citation Index is a bibliographic database of scientific publications published in Russian.
• ScienceDirect —Science Direct is a large collection of Engineering and Physical Science publications. The articles range from theoretical to applied science covering both foundational and research-based disciplines.
• Science.gov —The website is a collection of 60 databases concerning federal science information. The databases allow users to access over 2,200 websites concerning scientific research and development.
• ScienceOpen —ScienceOpen is a free Science research, publishing and networking platform with access to over 50 million articles. The website features research database access, social sharing and peer review.
• Scientillion —Scientillion is a search engine that provides access primarily to articles concerning Physics and Computer Science. It also allows access to e-prints of scientific papers from various fields such as Astronomy, Biology and Mathematics.
• SciSeek —SciSeek is a science search engine and directory in which users can browse by category, search by keyword, or add new sites to the listings.
• SciTech Connect —SciTech Connect is a website that features a database of over 3 million research articles from the Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information.
• Scopus —Scopus is a subscription-based abstract and citation database covering approximately 36,377 titles from 11,678 publishers in the fields of life sciences, social sciences, physical sciences and health sciences.
• Semantic Scholar —Semantic Scholar is a collection of peer-reviewed scientific research articles. The website features access to over 40 million papers from sources such as PubMed, Nature, and ArXiv.
• SPRESI —Spresi is an integrated scientific chemical database. It features 700,000 references, 4.6 million reactions, and 5.8 molecules that have been abstracted from the literature.
• SpringerLink —SpringerLink provides researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols and reference works.
• Strategian Science —Strategian is a free database to find resources in science, including full-text books, patents, and reports, as well as full-text journal and magazine articles.
• Tropical Diseases Bulletin —The tropical diseases bulletin is a database with abstracts and bibliographic information. It is primarily concerned with research on public health and infectious diseases in the developing world.
• Web of Science —Web of Science is a platform that connects the web of science core collection to patent data, an index of specialized subjects and research data sets. It accesses articles from over 33,000 journals.
• WorldWideScience.org —WorldWideScience.org is a gateway to both international and national science databases. The goal of the site is to promote scientific progress and discovery by providing one platform to access international science databases.
• VADLO —VADLO is a search engine for the purpose of accessing life science methods, protocols, and techniques. It gives access to a wide range of life science topics including biochemistry, genetics, and biotechnology.
• Zoological Record —Zoological Record is considered to be the oldest existing database of animal Biology. It is a leading taxonomic reference, a register of animal names, and covers a wide variety of subjects such as taxonomy, veterinary science, biodiversity, and the environment.

• Air University Library Index to Military Periodicals —Air University Library Index to Military Periodicals is a searchable, open-access database offering bibliographic and full-text information for military books and journal articles.
• Fold3 —Fold3 offers access to military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who currently serve, or have served, in the U.S. military.

• Digital History —Digital History is provided by the College of Education at the University of Houston and its purpose is to help teachers of American History in K-12 schools and colleges. It includes learning modules with historical overviews, along with recommended documents, films, historic images, lesson plans, fact checks, and guided student activities.
• Education Resources Information Center —Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) offers a searchable digital library of full-text research and bibliographic information in the field of education, and is run by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education.
• Lesson Planet —Lesson Planet is a membership-based database providing curriculum tools and lesson plans to K-12 educators, librarians, curriculum and technology specialists, and homeschooling parents.
• LexisNexis —LexisNexis Academic allows users to search and access full-text news, business, and legal publications. It is available in over 1,800 libraries around the world.
• LingBuzz —Lingbuzz is an archive that is freely accessible and offers linguistics articles, along with articles focusing on the latest research in syntax, semantics, phonology, morphology and more.
• VET-Bib —VET-Bib is a bibliographic database offering literature and information focused on vocational education and training in Europe.
• Westlaw —Westlaw is a subscription-based online legal research database providing a comprehensive collection of legal information, backed by a rigorous editorial process.

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• Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window A great database to get started with for your research on any topic. Use it to search for articles from scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals, newspapers, and magazines.
• Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window Contains full-text content and peer-reviewed business journals covering all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, accounting, banking, and finance.
• CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window Provides citations and full text articles primarily for nursing and allied health professionals. Coverage from 1937 to present.
• ERIC Database (via EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window Provides a comprehensive bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information for educators, researchers, and the general public.
• JSTOR This link opens in a new window Provides access to academic journals and books covering a wide range of disciplines; it also includes some limited primary source collections.
• PsycINFO This link opens in a new window Provides peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health and is produced by the American Psychological Association.
• PubMed This link opens in a new window Contains millions of citations for biomedical and health literature from MEDLINE and other sources. To access full text from Atkins Library's journal collections in addition to full-text content from PubMed Central and open access publications, use the links provided on Atkins Library web pages.
• Web of Science This link opens in a new window This multidisciplinary database includes a citation mapping feature that allows you to track research across time, including almost 1.7 billion cited references allowing for comprehensive searches.
• Communication and Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new window Offers full-text, indexing and abstracts for many top communication journals covering all related disciplines, including media studies, linguistics, rhetoric and discourse.
• ABI/INFORM Collection This link opens in a new window Contains thousands of journals and offers full-text titles covering business and economic conditions, corporate strategies, management techniques, and competitive and product information.
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Finding Information

• Types of Information Resources

Introduction

What are databases, further reading, learning objectives.

• Find ebooks
• Find Articles
• Find Newspaper Articles
• Find Images
• Getting Copies of Articles and Books You Can't Find

This page is designed to help you:

• Identify at least two differences between the type of information available through general search engines and academic databases
• Understand what research databases are and why they are a valuable part of academic work

There are many types of databases that you can use for your research. The database you choose will depend on what type of information you want to find. 

Research databases, such as JSTOR and Academic Search Premier, uncover the world of scholarly information. Most of the content in these databases is only available through the library. The complete list of databases is on the Databases A-Z list. The Library has purchased access to hundreds of databases on your behalf. There is no charge to use these resources.

Search Engines 

Research databases.

Let us search for the same thing in Google and in a general academic database called Academic Search Premier.

Search for the impact of social media on teenagers

Results in Google

Notes about these results in Google:

• 81,500,000 results
• Advertisements are the first two results
• Highlighted article with images from a high school
• Ability to quickly sort based on top Google categories: News, Images, Videos, Shopping

Search results in Academic Search Premier

Notes about these results in the Academic Search Premier database:

• 3 are from academic journals
• Able to quickly sort by scholarly qualification and publication date
• Avdic, A., & Eklund, A. (2010). Searching reference databases: What students experience and what teachers believe that students experience. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 42 (4), 224–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000610380119

This page was designed to help you:

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• Next: Find ebooks >>
• Last Updated: Feb 16, 2024 3:55 PM
• URL: https://libguides.brown.edu/findinginformation

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Free Publicly-Accessible Databases

You are here.

The following databases were selected not only for their availablity to the general public but also because of their broad appeal and scope, and access to full-text resources.

• African Journals Online A service to provide access to African published research, and increase worldwide knowledge of indigenous scholarship. It's published in Africa and cover the full range of academic disciplines.  
• AGRICOLA This catalog of the U.S. National Agriculatural Library (NAL) provides citations to agricultural literature. The NAL houses one of the world's largest and most accessible agricultural information collections and advances access to global information for agriculture.  
• AIDSinfo Access to wide-ranging Federal resources on HIV/AIDS clinical research, HIV treatment and prevention, and medical practice guidelines for health care providers and consumers.  
• American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed., 2000) [UCSB call #: PE 1628 .A623 2000]
• Anatomy of the Human Body by Henry Gray (20th ed., 1918) [UCSB has later editions at: QM 23.2 .G73]
• The Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer (1918)
• Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-1921) [various call numbers at UCSB]
• The Columbia Encyclopedia (6th ed., 2001) [UCSB call #: Ref AG 5 .C725 2000]
• Columbia Gazetteer of North America (2000) [UCSB call #: Ref E 35 .C65 2000]
• Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett (10th ed., 1919) [UCSB call #: Spec. Coll. PN 6081 .B29 1902; later editions at: PN 6081 .B29 and in Reference at: PN 6081 .B27]
• Robert's Rules of Order Revised (1915) [UCSB call #: Ref JF515 .W42 for latest edition]
• Roget's II: The New Thesaurus (3rd ed., 1995) [UCSB call #: Ref PE1591 .B35]
• Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) "The Most Notable Quotes, 1950-1988" [UCSB call #: Ref PN 6083 .S53 1988]
• The World Factbook (2008)
• BioMed Central Publisher of 187 peer-reviewed open access journals.  
• bizjournals Features local business news from around the nation, top business stories from American City's print editions and industry-specific news from more than 40 industries with access to each of the 42 local business sites; contains 1.25 million business news articles published since 1996.  
• BPubs.com The Business Publications Search Engine Organized by various business categories, this site provides links to full text business articles on the web.  
• Chaucer Bibliography Online The Online Chaucer Bibliography includes materials from the Annotated Chaucer Bibliography published annually in Studies in the Age of Chaucer (call number: PR 1901 .S78) and is sponsored by the NCS and the library of the University of Texas at San Antonio. (Note: "Title" searching is searching for the beginning of the title, not for keywords in the title.  
• Chemistry Central Publishing peer-reviewed open access research in chemistry, from BioMed Central - the leading biomedical open access publisher. This site features chemistry-related articles published in Chemistry Central Journal, BioMed Central journals and independent journals utilizing BioMed Central's open access publishing services. All original research articles published by, or in cooperation with, Chemistry Central are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication.  
• ClinicalTrials.gov A registry of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world. ClinicalTrials.gov gives you information about a trial's purpose, who may participate, locations, and phone numbers for more details. This information should be used in conjunction with advice from health care professionals.  
• Core Documents of U. S. Democracy To provide American citizens direct online access to the basic Federal Government documents that define our democratic society, a core group of current and historical Government publications is being made available for free, permanent, public access. In addition to full ASCII text, some documents, such as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, are available as scanned images of the original manuscripts. Document texts range from the Articles of Confederation to the current United States Government Manual, Statistical Abstracts and Code of Federal Regulations.  
• Dictionary.com Dictionary.com provides searchable access to several dictionaries, most notably, the American Heritage Dictionary , 3rd ed. (1996,1992) (in print at PE 1628 .A623 1992), plus Roget's Thesaurus, and links to a number of other dictionary sites on the web.  
• Directory of Open Access Journals This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. Covers nearly 150,000 articles in 834 searchable journals.  
• Energy Citations Database Free access to over 2.3 million science research citations with access to over 179,000 electronic documents, primarily from 1943 forward, made publicly available by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). ECD includes scientific and technical research results in disciplines of interest to DOE such as chemistry, physics, materials, environmental science, geology, engineering, mathematics, climatology, oceanography, computer science and related disciplines. It includes bibliographic citations to report literature, conference papers, journal articles, books, dissertations, and patents.  
• English Broadside Ballad Archive Created by the Early Modern Center in the English Department at UCSB, the English Broadside Ballad Archive (formerly, Pepys Ballad Archive) offers a fully-searchable database of over 1,800 broadside ballads, mostly of the seventeenth century and mostly in black-letter print. The ballads were collected by Samuel Pepys into five albums, which are held at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The ballads in the database are accessible as facsimiles, as facsimile transcriptions, and as recorded songs. Also provided are full citations for the ballads as well as background essays about ballad culture of the period and Pepys’s categories for organizing his collection.  
• Espacenet (European Patent Office) The European Patent Office's Esp@acenet provides detailed searching of EPO and PCT patent applications for the last 24 months, and worldwide patent documents searchable by patent number as early as 1920 for some issuing nations.  
• FWS National Image Library U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's online collection of public domain still photographs, containing still photo images of wildlife, plants, National Wildlife Refuges and other scenics, as well as wildlife management work.  
• Google Scholar Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.  
• Govinfo From the U.S. Government Printing Office: provides free electronic access to a wealth of important information products produced by the Federal Government. The information provided on this site is the official, published version.  
• Hearth Hearth is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines. Titles published between 1850 and 1950 were selected and ranked by teams of scholars for their great historical importance. The first phase of this project focused on books published between 1850 and 1925 and a small number of journals. Future phases of the project will include books published between 1926 and 1950, as well as additional journals. The full text of these materials, as well as bibliographies and essays on the wide array of subjects relating to Home Economics, are all freely accessible on this site.  
• Encyclopedia.com Contains nearly 200,000 brief entries from the Britannica , Oxford University Press , and Columbia Encyclopedia .  
• HighWire Press Free full-text articles in science disciplines, from HighWire Press at Stanford University.  
• ibiblio One of the largest "collections of collections" on the Internet, ibiblio.org is a conservancy of freely available information, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies. ibiblio.org is a collaboration of the School of Information and Library Science and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.  
• InfoPlease Search the Information Please almanac and timeline, their atlas, the Columbia Encyclopedia, a dictionary, and a thesaurus. Information Please has been providing authoritative answers to all kinds of factual questions since 1938.  
• Audio Archive The Archive contains over a hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.
• Live Music Archive The Internet Archive has teamed up with etree wiki to preserve and archive as many live concerts as possible for current and future generations to enjoy. All music in this Collection is from trade-friendly artists and is strictly noncommercial, both for access here and for any further distribution. Artists' commercial releases are off-limits. This collection is maintained by the etree.org community.
• Moving Images Collections This collection of thousands of digital movies is free and open for everyone to use. It includes the Prelinger Archive, a collection of nearly 2,000 advertising and educational films from 1927 to the present.
• Text Archive This collection is open to the community for the contribution of any type of text.  
• Library of Congress Digital Collections This Library of Congress project provides access to a large number of LoC collections, searchable and browsable by subject and title, including a large quantity of digitized primary source material.
• MagPortal "Find individual articles from many free magazines by browsing the categories or using the search engine."  
• Making of America: at Cornell University and University of Michigan Hosted at Cornell University and the University of Michigan, Making of America (MOA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The Cornell collection currently contains 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints while the Michigan collection contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints, estimated at over 3% of all American monographs published in the 19th century. All are in the form of searchable scanned images.  
• MedKnow Publications The largest publisher in India for academic and scientific biomedical journals, publishing high quality peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Medknow, with over 40 print + online journals, is probably the largest open access publisher of print journals in the world and provides immediate free access to the electronic editions of the journals.  
• MedlinePlus "Extensive information from the National Institutes of Health and other trusted sources on over 740 topics on conditions, diseases and wellness. There are also lists of hospitals and physicians, a medical encyclopedia and a medical dictionary, health information in Spanish, extensive information on prescription and nonprescription drugs, health information from the media, and links to thousands of clinical trials."  
• Online Exhibits Features high resolution images of a variety of manuscripts, artworks and photographs from the U.S. National Archives.
• Featured Documents
• America's Historical Documents The National Archives preserves and provides access to the records of the Federal Government. Here is a sample of these records, from our most celebrated milestones to little-known surprises.
• Educators & Students: Primary Sources and Activities A large number of collections of primary documents and images arranged for use by teachers of history, civics or use of government documents.  
• National Forest Service Library Catalog of records to Forest Service Research publications dating back to 1904. Includes almost 6,000 full-text publications.  
• National Service Center for Environmental Publications A database of over 24,000 full-text U.S. EPA documents  
• NCJRS Virtual Library (National Criminal Justice Reference Service) Access to more than 3,500 full text publications and more than 190,000 abstracts, or summaries, of publications on this site and from NCJRS partner agency websites.  
• O*NET OnLine From the U.S. Department of Labor, the Occupational Information Network is a comprehensive database of worker attributes and job characteristics. The O*NET database includes information on skills, abilities, knowledges, work activities, and interests associated with occupations. Information in O*NET is available for over 800 occupations. Each occupational title and code is based on the most current version of the Standard Occupational Classification system.O*NET replaces the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT).  
• Online Archive of California The Online Archive of California is a collaborative project to create a searchable online union database of finding aids to archival collections. This database includes the finding aids to repositories from more than 90 institutions statewide including all nine UC campuses, and is continuing to expand. Finding aids provide detailed descriptions of collections, their intellectual organization and, at varying levels of analysis, of individual items in the collections. A small but increasing number of the finding aids contain links to online digital versions of the source material.  
• The Online Books Page "Listing over 25,000 free books on the Web," by author, title, subject, and other features, such as: "A Celebration of Women Writers," "Banned Books Online," "Prize Winners Online," "Foreign Language," and "Specialty" by subject. This site also links to extensive directories which list thousands more online books.
• OSTI.gov Search the U.S. Dept. of Energy's scientific and technical research reports in the sciences including biology, environmental sciences, physics, energy, and other topics.
• Paper of Record Building the world's largest searchable archive of historical newspapers. Over 21 million images in the collection so far. Searchable newspaper image documents presented in their original published form.  
• Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is one of the earliest attempts to provide widespread access to public domain books via the Internet. As of 2002, it offers about 6,200 works, adding about 150 per month. Files are in plain ASCII text or in zipped ASCII text, available from a number of mirror sites around the world. The Project Gutenberg catalog is searchable by author and title. Author and title lists may be downloaded by FTP.  
• PLoS: Public Library of Science A nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.  
• PubMed Central (PMC) The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.  
• Science.gov Science.gov is a gateway to over 50 million pages of authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. government agencies, including research and development results.  
• USPTO Patent Database The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)'s Patent Databases allows searching of the bibliographic data (titles, inventors, assignees, class codes, references, etc.) or full text in US patents issued since 1976.  
• USPTO Trademark Database The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)'s Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) allows searching of the key data (titles, owners, relevant dates) in current Federal trademarks and inactive ones back to 1984. Results display the trademark text data and, in many cases, the images for graphic trademarks. It does not include state or foreign trademarks.

Updated: 10/12/20

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• Research Databases and Guides
• A-Z List of Research Databases

Research Databases and Guides: A-Z List of Research Databases

• Research Guides

#    a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   j   k   l   m   n   o   p    q   r   s    t   u    v    w   xyz

# | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X, Y, Z

• accessCeramics This link opens in a new window A growing collection of contemporary ceramics images from artists around the world, created through collaboration between Watzek Library and Ted Vogel, Lewis & Clark's Studio Head of Ceramics.
• Africabib This link opens in a new window Two bibliographic databases covering Africa- one general and one concerning women. more... less... The site consists of two bibliographic databases covering Africana covering Africana periodical literature (Bibliography of Africana Periodical Literature Database) and African Women's literature (African Women's Database). You will also find a comprehensive bibliography on women travelers and explorers to Africa (Women Travelers, Explorers and Missionaries to Africa: 1763-2004: A Comprehensive English Language Bibliography).

• Archival Research Catalog This link opens in a new window ARC is the online catalog of NARA's nationwide holdings in the Washington, DC area, Regional Archives and Presidential Libraries. more... less... With billions of records, ARC describes about half of the holdings in the National Archives. Some additional archival materials -- such as architectural and engineering drawings items, maps and charts, and still pictures -- have been digitized and are available through ARC.
• Archive.org The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books.
• ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new window Provides access to descriptions of archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies and archives worldwide. more... less... ArchiveGrid provides online access to nearly a million descriptions of archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies and archives worldwide. Includes access to collections held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian Institution - Archives of American Art, New York Public Library, and many more: listed on their homepage.
• Art Resource Fine art stock licensing. Art Resource is the world's largest fine art stock photo archive, licensing authorized images to all media.
• ARTFL Project This link opens in a new window Nearly 3,000 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. more... less... At present, ARTFL's main corpus, ARTFL-FRANTEXT, consists of nearly 3,000 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts. Genres include novels, verse, theater, journalism, essays, correspondence, and treatises. Subjects include literary criticism, biology, history, economics, and philosophy. In most cases standard scholarly editions were used in converting the text into machine-readable form, and the data contain page references to these editions. The FRANTEXT corpus is updated as new high-quality digital texts become available.

• Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) This link opens in a new window Covers material published between 1975 and 2007. The BHA is a free online resource that is not connected to Watzek systems; make sure to check items in Primo for local availability. more... less... BHA is a free database that encompasses two databases, the BHA (Bibliography of the History of Art) and RILA (Rpertoire de la litterature de l'art). BHA covers the years 1990-2007; the Getty Web version includes all records with abstracts in French or English and all subject terms in French and English. RILA covers the years 19751989.

• British Library 14 million books, 920,000 journal and newspaper titles, 58 million patents, 3 million sound recordings.
• Digital Public Library of America This link opens in a new window The DPLA offers a single point of access to millions of items photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Users can browse and search the DPLA's collections by timeline, map, format, and topic.
• Environmental History Bibliography This link opens in a new window Contains over 40,000 annotated citations to books, articles, and dissertations published from 1633 to the present. more... less... For over 50 years the Forest History Society (FHS) has monitored the world of publishing for items written as history and dealing with the utilization, management, and appreciation of forest-related resources. Originally the information was kept on index cards, then in 1977 was published in North American Forest and Conservation History: A Bibliography by Ronald J. Fahl (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO Press, 1977). Since the early 1980s FHS has maintained the bibliography in a computer database, which is continually updated and searchable on our web site.
• GovInfo This link opens in a new window A service of the U.S. Government Printing Office, this site provides free electronic access to over 1,000 databases documenting the legislative, executive and judicial branches.
• Fed in Print A free, comprehensive index to economic research publications of the Federal Reserve. Covers 1970s-present. more... less... Fed in Print is the central catalog of publications of the US Federal Reserve System. This free, comprehensive index covers publications from 1970s-present.
• Federal Register This link opens in a new window A highly user-friendly interface to the government's main publication on federal rules and regulations.
• Getty Provenance Index Databases contain indexed transcriptions of material from auction catalogs and archival inventories of western European works of art, and contain nearly 1,000,000 records that cover the period from the late 16th century to the early 20th century.
• GPO Monthly Catalog This link opens in a new window A guide to publications from the Government Printing Office since July 1976. more... less... Consists of records published by the GPO since July 1976, including references to congressional committee reports and hearings, debates, documents from executive departments, and more.
• Historic Oregon Newspapers This link opens in a new window On this site you can search and access complete content for historic Oregon newspapers that have been digitized as part of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program (ODNP). Titles are here http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/newspapers/.
• Homeland Security Digital Library This link opens in a new window The HSDL collection includes homeland security strategy, policy and research documents. more... less... The HSDL collection provides quick access to important U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents as well as specialized resources such as theses and reports from various universities, organizations and local and state agencies. The resources are reviewed and selected by a team of homeland security researchers and organized in a unique homeland security taxonomy.
• Index to Military Periodicals (AULIMP) Indexes significant articles, news items, book reviews and editorials from English language military and aeronautical periodicals. more... less... The Air University Library's Index to Military Periodicals is a subject index to significant articles, news items, and editorials from English language military and aeronautical periodicals. The Index contains citations since 1988 and is updated continuously. A comprehensive list of all journals covered by AULIMP since 1949 is available as the Historical Index of AULIMP titles.
• LegalTrac Full-text coverage of major law reviews, legal newspapers, bar association journals and international legal journals.
• PubMed This link opens in a new window National Library of Medicine's database covering the international literature on biomedicine, including dentistry and nursing. more... less... National Library of Medicine's database covering the international literature on biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, humanities, and information science as they relate to medicine and health care. Many records include abstracts.
• National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections This link opens in a new window NUCMC is a catalog of historical manuscript collections in the United States. more... less... NUCMC lists archival and manuscript collections in repositories across the U.S. Also contains links to other archival sites of interest. The Watzek Library also has print editions that cover pre-1986 in the stacks that contain records for archives added to the catalog before 1986: National union catalog of manuscript collections
• Natural Resources Conservation Service - Geospatial Data Gateway Site that offers national datasets including topoquads, imagery, climate, soil, census data, and other data topics.
• NCBI Gene National Library of Medicine database that integrates gene information from a wide range of species.
• Archives West This link opens in a new window Provides enhanced access to more than 2,400 archival and manuscript collections in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
• NTIS (National Technical Information Service) This link opens in a new window Containing over 2.0 million bibliographic records, the NTIS Database is the preeminent resource for accessing the latest research sponsored by the United States and select foreign governments.
• Open Library Featuring more than 23 million books (and more than 1 million with full-text).
• Oregon Index This link opens in a new window Indexes several Oregon newspapers. more... less... The Oregon Index selectively indexes several Oregon newspapers and other publications with articles about Oregon. No full text is provided.
• Oregon Employment Department Find comprehensive information on over 700 occupations. more... less... OLMIS provides information about 700 occupations, including occupational descriptions, licensing information, wages, occupational projections, educational requirements, schools offering training, and more.
• Perseus Digital Library This link opens in a new window Primarily a full-text database of ancient Greek and Roman texts, the collection has recently expanded into Renaissance English and 19th century American texts as well.
• PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window Now part of APA PsycNET .
• PsycCRITIQUES This link opens in a new window Now part of APA PsycNET .
• PsycINFO This link opens in a new window Now part of APA PsycNET .
• PsycTHERAPY This link opens in a new window Now part of APA PsycNET .

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• EconPapers (RePEc) This link opens in a new window RePEc disseminates research in economics, including working papers, journal articles, software components, author information, directory of institutions. more... less... RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 58 countries and 35 U.S. states to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, journal articles and software components. Some RePEc material is freely available, but RePEc does not contain full-text journal articles; article links require subscription access. RePEc collaborates with EconLit to provide content from leading universities' working paper series to EconLit.
• SCAMPI This link opens in a new window Indexes articles on military and naval art and science, operational warfare, joint planning, national and international politics, and other areas. more... less... The Joint Forces Staff College Ike Skelton Library is a specialized military library, focusing on research in joint and multinational operations, military history and naval science, operational warfare, and operations other than war. Library staff members regularly scan the weekly news magazines, monthly and bimonthly journals such as Military Review, Armed Forces Journal, and quarterly publications, including NATO's Nations and Partners for Peace, RUSI Journal, and the Naval War College Review. Miscellaneous reports from RAND and the General Accounting Office are also indexed for SCAMPI. The resulting database serves as a guide to articles on military and naval art and science, operational warfare, joint planning, national and international politics, and other areas researched by JFSC faculty, staff, and students. The SCAMPI database covers the period from 1985 thru the present.
• SIRIS This link opens in a new window Smithsonian Institute research databases focus on art and culture. more... less... Access to a variety of databases, including the Smithsonian library catalogs, the Freer Gallery of Art Catalog, the Manuscripts & Photographic Collections Catalog, and the national Inventory of American Painting and Sculpture databases.
• SODA Southern Oregon Digital Archives Includes federal, state and local documents pertaining to Southern Oregon History, the Southern Oregon Bioregion, and First Nations. more... less... The First Nations Collection of the Southern Oregon Digital Archives consists of documents, books, and articles relating to the indigenous peoples of this bioregion. SODA has begun to collect and mount materials about many tribes in southwestern Oregon and northern California. Some of these nations include the Coos, Hupa, Karuk, Klamath, Modoc, Takelma, Shasta, Siuslaw,Cow Creek Band of Umpqua, Yahooskin, and Yurok nations. Over the past 30 years the Southern Oregon University Library has actively collected hundreds of federal and state government publications relating to the Southern Oregon Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion. Along with those publications we receive through the U.S. Government Printing Office and the Oregon State Library, SODA has made special efforts to collect "fugitive" and "gray" documents, those materials not normally distributed through these channels. Many are written by researchers that are not regular staff members of the state or federal government, but who contract with regional government offices to do environmental research.
• TRAC / TRACFED This link opens in a new window Comprehensive information on federal enforcement, staffing and spending.
• TRID Transport Research International Documentation TRID is the world's largest and most comprehensive bibliographic resource on transportation information. more... less... The TRID Database contains almost a million records of references to books, technical reports, conference proceedings, journal articles and on-going research in the field of transportation.
• UNdata Browse or search for data series of more than 55 million records from the databases of the UN on employment, education, energy, environment, health, population, refugees, and much more.
• USGS Map locator This link opens in a new window Download USGS maps in pdf format.

Provides full-text articles for the Wall Street Journal from January 2, 1984 through current issue.

• Web Gallery of Art (Europe) A virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 12th to mid-19th centuries. more... less... Includes guided tours of museums, interactive, full-screen views of artworks, and a glossary, among other resources.
• Wolframalpha.com This link opens in a new window Searches datasets rather than web pages to provide answers.
• World Bank Open Data The World Bank's premier annual compilation of data. World Development Indicators alone includes 1431 time series data categories. more... less... The tables cover 152 economies and 14 country groups-with basic indicators for a further 56 economies.
• WorldCat This link opens in a new window WorldCat searches library catalogs from all over the United States, including Summit libraries and other academic and public libraries. The older Firstsearch . interface is due to go away but is still here for now. more... less... Provides access to more than 135 million bibliographic records from library holdings around the world. All types of materials are listed, including books, sound recordings, musical scores, visual materials, and web resources. Includes some journal articles.

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• Last Updated: Apr 3, 2024 10:06 AM
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