Academic Databases

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

  • the general list of search engines for all-purpose search engines that can be used for academic purposes
  • bibliographic databases for information about databases giving bibliographic information about finding books and journal articles.

Note that “free” or “subscription” can refer both to the availability of the database or of the journal articles included. This has been indicated as precisely as possible in the lists below.

Name Discipline(s) Description Access Cost Provider(s)
Academic Journals Database Multidisciplinary Universal index of periodical literature covering basic research from all fields of knowledge. It contains complete bibliographic citations, precise indexing, and informative abstracts for papers from a wide range of periodicals. Full-text from most of the articles is available. It contains about 700,000 articles. Free Academic Journals Database [1]
Academic Publications eJournal Multidisciplinary science (student based) Student driven research abstracts, posters, articles, science specific search engine, public forum [2] Free APeJ search[3]
Academic Search Multidisciplinary Several versions: Complete, Elite, Premier, and Alumni Edition[4] Subscription EBSCO Publishing [5]
Aerospace & High Technology Database Aerospace, Aeronautics, Astronautics   Subscription ProQuest[6]
AJOL: African Journals OnLine Multidisciplinary Scholarly journals published in Africa[7] Free abstracts; Subscription full-text African Journals OnLine[8]
AgeLine Sociology, Gerontology Includes information on aging-related topics, including economics, public health and policy. Subscription EBSCO Publishing[9]
AGRICOLA: Agricultural Online Access Agriculture   Free & Subscription Produced by the United States National Agricultural Library. Free access provided by NAL.[9] Subscription access provided by Proquest,[10] OVID.[11]
AGRIS: Agricultural database Agriculture Covers agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, aquatic sciences and fisheries, human nutrition, extension literature from over 100 participating countries.Material includes unique grey literature such as unpublished scientific and technical reports, theses, conference papers, government publications, and more. Free Produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://agris.fao.org AGRIS
Airiti Inc Multidisciplinary China, Taiwan. Subscription Airiti Inc[12]
Analytical Abstracts Chemistry   Subscription Royal Society of Chemistry[13]
Analytical sciences digital library Analytical sciences   Free National Science Digital Library and the Analytical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society[14]
Anthropological Index Online Anthropology Index only (no abstracts or full-text). Free Royal Anthropological Institute [15]
Anthropological Literature Anthropology Syllaba Press [16] Free to Harvard faculty, staff and students. Subscription for non-Harvard access. Maintained by Harvard University. Non-Harvard access provided by OCLC[17]
eLum Index Online Anthropology, Archaeology, Sociology Include full access to electronic documents (eBooks and eJournals) about Anthropology, Archaeology & Sociology Research in Latin America(full-text). Subscription
Arachne Archaeology, Art history German language Free German Archaeological Institute & the University of Cologne, administered by Reinhard Foertsch[18]
Arnetminer Computer Science Online service used to index and search academic social networks Free Tsinghua University[19]
Arts & Humanities Citation Index Arts, Humanities Part of Web of Science Subscription Thomson Reuters[20]
arXiv Physics, Mathematics, Computer science, Nonlinear sciences, Quantitative biology and Statistics   Free Cornell University[21]
Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library Computer Science, Engineering   Subscription Association for Computing Machinery[22]
Astrophysics Data System Astrophysics, Geophysics, Physics   Free Harvard University[23]
ATLA Religion Database Religious studies Provides information on topics such as biblical studies, world religions, church history, and religion in social issues Subscription [24]
AULIMP: Air University Library’s Index to Military Periodicals Military Science   Free Air University[25]
BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine Multidisciplinary   Free Bielefeld University [26]
Beilstein database Organic chemistry   Subscription Available from Elsevier under the product name Reaxys [27]
Biological Abstracts Biology A complete collection of bibliographic references covering life science and biomedical research literature published from more than 4,000 journals internationally. Subscription Available from Thomson Reuters[28]
BioOne Biology, Ecology, and Environmental Science An aggregation of over 78,000 peer-reviewed, full-text articles on current research in Biodiversity Conservation, Biology, Ecology, Plant Sciences, Entomology, Ornithology, and Zoology. Free Abstract & References, Subscription Collections, and an Open Access Collection Available from BioOne[29]
Bioinformatic Harvester Biology, Bioinformatics A meta search engine for 50 major bioinformatic databases and projects. Free Available from Liebel-Lab [10] KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology [11]
Book Review Index Online Book reviews   Subscription Thomson Gale[30]
Books In Print Books   Subscription R.R. Bowker[31]
Chemical Abstracts Service Chemistry   Subscription American Chemical Society[32]
ChemXSeer Chemistry   Free Pennsylvania State University[33]
Chinese Social Science Citation Index Social sciences   Subscription Nanjing University[34]
Cochrane Library Medicine, Healthcare Includes reviews of research to promote evidence-based healthcare. Subscription Wiley Interscience[35]
CINAHL: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Nursing, Allied Health   Subscription EBSCO[36]
CHBD: Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database Medicine   Free University of Calgary[37]
Citebase Search Mathematics, Computer science, Physics Semi-autonomous citation index of free online research Free University of Southampton[38]
CiteSeer Computer Science Replaced by CiteSeerX. Free Pennsylvania State University[39]
CiteSeerX Computer Science   Free Pennsylvania State University[40]
CogPrints: Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archives Science (General)   Free University of Southampton[41]
The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies Computer science   Free Alf-Christian Achilles[42]
Compendex Engineering Electronic version of Engineering Index. Subscription Elsevier[43]
Current Index to Statistics Statistics Limited free search[44] Subscription American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics[45]
Current Contents Multidisciplinary Part of Web of Knowledge. Contains 7 discipline-specific subsets. Subscription Thompson Reuters[46]
Directory of Open Access Journals Journals   Free Lund University[47]
DBLP Computer science Comprehensive list of papers from major computer science conferences and journals Free University of Trier, Germany
Dotec-Colombia Economics Working papers and articles about economics in Colombia. More than 5,000 documents from more than 50 institutions in the country. Dotec-Colombia automatically links all documents in Repec Free Dotec-Colombia [48]
EconLit Economics The American Economic Association’s electronic database, the world’s foremost source of references to economic literature. Subscription Produced by the American Economic Association.[49] Available from CSA, DIALOG, OCLC, OVID, and AEA.[50]
EMBASE Biomedicine, Pharmacology Biomedical database with a strong focus on drug and pharmaceutical research. Subscription Elsevier[51]
ERIC: Educational Resource Information Center Education Education literature and resources. Provides access to over 1.3 million records dating back to 1966. Free Produced by the United States Department of Education.[52] Also available by subscription from OCLC, CSA.
Food Science and Technology Abstracts Food science, Food technology, Nutrition The world’s leading database of information on food science, food technology and nutrition Subscription Produced by the International Food Information Service. Access provided by OVID, Web of Knowledge, Dialog, DataStar and STN International[53]
FOREASt: Free Open Resources for East Asian Studies East Asian Studies Covers over 300 free and open access resources for studying China, Japan, and Korea, including online databases, digital collections, and open access journals. Free Internet East Asian Library[54]
Fuse Business research papers A business research engine, indexing 728 open-access ejournals and similar open sources. Does not search press releases or trade magazines. Free Fuse[55]
GENESIS Women’s history Descriptions of women’s history collections from sources in the UK, as well as women’s history websites. Free London Metropolitan University[56]
German Education Index Education A bibliographical database that provides comprehensive references to all areas of education. Free Coordinating Office of the German Education Index[57]
Google Scholar Multidisciplinary   Free Google[58]
GoPubMed Medicine   Free Transinsight GmbH [59]
HubMed Medicine An alternative interface to the PubMed medical literature database Free Alf Eaton[60]
IEEE Xplore Computer Science, Engineering, Electronics   Subscription IEEE [61]
Information Bridge: Department of Energy Scientific and Technical Information Multidisciplinary The Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information provides free public access to over 266,000 full-text documents and bibliographic citations of Department of Energy (DOE) research report literature. Documents are primarily from 1991 forward and were produced by DOE, the DOE contractor community, and/or DOE grantees. Legacy documents are added as they become available in electronic format. Free United States Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information[62]
Informit Multidisciplinary Australasian aggregator of bibliographic databases and journals N/A RMIT Publishing[63]
Infotopia Multidisciplinary United States search engine of academic sites approved by librarians, teachers, and consortia Free Dr. Michael Bell[64]
IngentaConnect Multidisciplinary   Free searching; Subscription full-text Ingenta[65]
Indian Citation Index (ICI) Multidisciplinary   Subscription Bibliographical, full-text ICI[66]
Inspec Physics, Engineering, Computer Science The leading bibliographic database providing abstracts and indexing to the world’s scientific and technical papers in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computing, information technology, manufacturing, production, and mechanical engineering. Subscription IET[67]
Interred educational search engine Multidisciplinary Is a semantic web search engine for education. Free Interred[68]
InTechOpen Multidisciplinary Open access books and journals in science, technology and medicine. Free InTech[69]
International Directory of Philosophy Philosophy Contains information on university philosophy departments and programs, philosophical societies, research centers, journals, and philosophy publishers around the world. Subscription Philosophy Documentation Center[70]
Intute Multidisciplinary Serves students, teachers, and researchers in UK further education and higher education, offering a selection of around 300,000 academic websites which have been hand-picked and described by subject specialists. Free Intute[71]
Intwine Arts and Humanities Allows the searching of the full-text of all academic websites catalogued by the Intute arts and humanities service from 2005–2010. Free Intwine[72]
JournalSeek Multidisciplinary Open access journals in different language Links to journal’s home page and publishers JournalSeek[73]
JSTOR: Journal Storage Multidisciplinary (Historical)   Subscription JSTOR[74]
JURN Arts and Humanities Search and retrieve the full-text of over 3,600 scholarly ejournals in the arts and humanities. Free JURN[75]
LexisNexis Law (general) Electronic database for legal and public-records related information Subscription Reed Elsevier
MathSciNet Mathematics Available in print as Mathematical Reviews Subscription American Mathematical Society[76]
MedlinePlus Medicine   Free Produced by the United States National Library of Medicine, the United States National Institutes of Health, and the United States Department of Health and Human Services[77]
Mendeley Multidisciplinary The Mendeley research catalog is a crowdsourced database of research documents. Researchers have uploaded nearly 100M documents into the catalog with additional contributions coming directly from subject repositories like Pubmed Central and Arxiv.org or web crawls. Free Mendeley[78]
Merck Index Chemistry, Biology, Pharmacology Also available in print. Subscription Produced by Merck & Co.. Available from CambridgeSoft Corporation, Dialog, Knovel, MedicinesComplete, STN International[79]
Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts Meteorology, Astrophysics, Geology   Subscription Produced by the American Meteorological Society. Available from Dialog[80] and CSA.[81]
Microsoft Academic Search Computer Science and a limited extent on information science Provides many innovative ways to explore scientific papers, conferences, journals, and authors[82] Free Microsoft
NBER: National Bureau of Economic Research Economics   Free National Bureau of Economic Research[83]
National Criminal Justice Reference Service[84] Criminology, Sociology Abstracts of scholarly journal articles, agency and NGO reports, and conference proceedings Free United States Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs[85]
National Diet Library Collection Multidisciplinary Japanese. Catalog for the National Library of Japan. N/A National Diet Library[86]
OAIster Multidisciplinary   Free OCLC [87]
Odysci Academic Search Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and related research topics A web portal for academic search and rank and technical collaboration, in the computer science, electrical engineering and related research topics. Free Odysci [88]
Open Access Journals Search Engine (OAJSE) Multidisciplinary Provides Searching and Browsing of Open Access Journals Free Open Access Journals Search Engine (OAJSE).[89]
Open J-Gate Journals Index of open access journals Free Informatics India Ltd.[90]
OpenSIGLE Grey literature Indexes European grey literature. Free Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique[91]
Philosophy Documentation Center eCollection Applied ethics, Philosophy, Religious studies Journals, series, conference proceedings, and other works from several countries. Subscription Philosophy Documentation Center[92]
Philosophy Research Index Philosophy Index of books, journals, disserations, and other documents Subscription Philosophy Documentation Center[92]
PhilPapers Philosophy   Free PhilPapers[93]
PhilSci Archive Philosophy Philosophy of science e-print archive Free PhilSci Archive[94]
POIESIS: Philosophy Online Serials Philosophy Journals and series Subscription Philosophy Documentation Center [92]
PsychSpider Psychology Psychology search engine, which indexes Web content as well as bibliographic (meta-) data. Approximately 1.2 Mio documents from the surface Web and the invisible Web are accessible from a single point of entry. Free Produced by the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information.[95]
PsycINFO Psychology The largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. It contains over 2.6 million citations and summaries dating as far back as the early 19th century. Subscription Produced by the APA.[96] Available from several database vendors.[97]
PSYNDEX Psychology PSYNDEX is the most comprehensive abstract database (not full-text) of psychological literature, audiovisual media, intervention programs and tests from the German-speaking countries. Subscription Produced by the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information.[98]
Pubget Multidisciplinary   Subscription Pubget
PubMed Medicine   Free National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Library of Medicine[99]
PubChem Chemistry   Free National Center for Biotechnology Information and the U.S. National Library of Medicine [100]
Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature Journals and Magazines Coverage: 1983–present. Subscription H. W. Wilson Company[101]
Reader’s Guide Retrospective: 1890–1982 Journals and Magazines   Subscription H. W. Wilson Company[102]
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics Economics   Free Volunteer Collaboration [103]
Rock’s Backpages Music Primary documents from the history of rock and roll Subscription. Limited free access with registration. Backpages Limited[104]
SafetyLit[105] Multidisciplinary Citations and abstracts of journal articles and reports from researchers working in the more than 35 distinct professional disciplines (architecture - zoology) relevant to preventing unintentional injuries, violence, and self-harm. Free San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health[106] and the World Health Organization, Department of Violence and Injury Prevention[107]
SciDiver Physics, Mathematics, Computer science, Nonlinear sciences, Quantitative biology and Statistics Experimental enhanced search interface with NLP based search over arXiv. Free SciDiver[108]
Science.gov Multidisciplinary A gateway to government science information and research results. Science.gov provides a search of over 45 scientific databases and 200 million pages of science information with just one query, and is a gateway to over 2000 scientific Websites. Free Science.gov Alliance, 18 scientific and technical organizations from 14 federal agencies that contribute to Science.gov. United States Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information serves as the operating agent for Science.gov.[109]
Science Accelerator Multidisciplinary A gateway to results of DOE research and development and major R&D accomplishments of interest to DOE. Free United States Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information.[110]
Science Citation Index Science (General) Part of Web of Science Subscription Thompson Reuters[111]
ScienceDirect Multidisciplinary   Subscription Elsevier[112]
Scirus Science (General)   Free Elsevier[113]
Scopus Multidisciplinary   Subscription Elsevier[114]
SearchTeam Multidisciplinary Students search together collaboratively for scholarly articles and resources Free Zakta[115]
SeDiCI UNLP [116] Multidisciplinary Journal articles, conferences’ proceedings, theses, pictures and all the Intellectual Creation from the National University of La Plata Free National University of La Plata[117]
Social Science Citation Index Social science Part of Web of Science Subscription Thompson Reuters[118]
Socol@r: Socolar Multidisciplinary Scholarly open access resources in different language Free abstracts; Links to full-text Socolar[119]
SSRN: Social Science Research Network Social science Contains an abstracts database and a electronic paper collection, arranged by discipline. Free Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc.[120]
SSRRN: Social Science Research Resources Network Social science Indexes datasets and statistical codes Free Social Science Research Resources Network =[121]
SPIRES-HEP Physics, (High Energy)   Free Stanford Linear Accelerator Center & partners [122]
SpringerLink Multidisciplinary   Free abstract & preview; Subscription full-text Springer [123]
TDG Scholar Computer science scholarly articles   Free The Distributed Group[124]
Theological Journals Search Theology, Religious studies Allows searching and retrieval of full text articles from over 350 open access journals. Free Google[125]
Udemy Multidisciplinary Allows anyone to teach and learn online through videos, webinars, forums, and more. Free Udemy
Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory Periodicals   Subscription Proquest[126]
VADLO Biomedicine, Life science Categories indexed: Protocols, Online tools, Powerpoints, Databases, Software Free VADLO[127]
Web of Knowledge Multidisciplinary Includes other products, such as Web of Science, Biological Abstracts & The Zoological Record Subscription Thomson Reuters[128]
Web of Science Science (General) Includes other products, such as Social Science Citation Index & Science Citation Index. Subscription Thomson Reuters[129]
WestLaw Law (General)   Subscription Thomson Reuters
WorldCat Multidisciplinary Unified catalog of member libraries’ catalogs Free & Subscription OCLC[130]
WorldWideScience Multidisciplinary WorldWideScience is a global science gateway composed of national and international scientific databases and portals. WorldWideScience accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching of databases from around the world. Multilingual WorldWideScience provides real-time searching and translation of globally dispersed multilingual scientific literature. Free The WorldWideScience Alliance, a multilateral partnership, consists of participating member countries and provides the governance structure for WorldWideScience. United States Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information serves as the operating agent for WorldWideScience.[131]
Zasshi Kiji Sakuin: Japanese Periodicals Index Journals Japanese. N/A National Diet Library’s Online Catalog,[132] MagazinePlus,[133] CiNii[134]
Zentralblatt MATH Mathematics First three records free without subscription. Subscription Springer Science+Business Media[135]
The Zoological Record Zoology Unofficial register of scientific names & papers in Zoology. Coverage 1864–present. Subscription Thompson Reuters[136]