by OnlinePhDProgram.org
Academic research is the heart of any masters or PhD program. While graduate level students must still take courses, the bulk of their work is focused on doing original research and writing a compelling paper that they will then have to defend in front of a panel of professors or others with expertise in the field. While in-depth research was once confined to reference libraries and organizations with access to years’ worth of copies of academic journals, much of the work of original research can now be done online. Major repositories of academic research like JSTOR and LexisNexis can now be searched comprehensively online, and even Google has an easy-to-use scholarly search engine. Online libraries, journals, databases, and academic search engines are a great resource for graduate students and PhD students, as well as people at any level of education who are working on in-depth research.
The subject matter contained in these sites covers many academic disciplines, but it would be impossible to cover all of them in one list. Fortunately there are specialized academic databases and search engines for nearly any topic imaginable. This isn’t a ranked list, but a sample of many of the highest quality online resources for academic research.
Academic Search Engines
Academic search engines like the ones offered by Google, Microsoft, and many academic publishing companies, don’t necessarily offer full access to published papers, but they are a great way to do preliminary research and find out what type of investigation has already been done in any academic sphere.
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Google Scholar
Google Scholar offers users a search engine to find articles, legal documents, and other scholarly pieces. They also have a great citation function that helps users track their research.
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JSTOR
JSTOR is a subscription based academic search engine that allows users access to scholarly journals, articles, primary sources and even books. They have thousands of sources available in over a dozen categories like science, humanities, law and business.
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Lexis Nexis
Lexis Nexis is an online subscription based tool that helps users navigate and narrow down the overwhelming amount of information available on different topics.
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Elsevier Health
Elsevier is a leading publisher of health science books and journals. They offer journal subscriptions to medical practitioners and have resources in topics such as dentistry, psychiatry, and even veterinary medicine.
Investigate Further: Journals and Clinics
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Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a user edited encyclopedia about topics from pop culture to history to television to molecular science. Free to anyone, users can flag any incorrect information and update and add new information and sources. Though it won’t serve as an actual citation in an academic paper, it is a great resource for getting a broad overview and picking a direction for further inquiry on any topic
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Scirus
SCIRUS is possibly the most comprehensive scientific research tool on the web, with over 575 million scientific items indexed at last count. This search tool allows researchers to search for not only journal content, but also scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information.
Investigate Further: Advanced Search
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ePsychology
ePsychology is full of free articles and ebooks that lend themselves to research and understanding of the foundations of psychology.
Investigate Further: Research in Psychology
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Anthropology Review Database
The Anthropology Review Database is an easy to use search engine for those looking for anthropology publications. Users can find reviews of recent books, films, and even software and websites here, to discover titles that are relevant to their interests and worth including in their research or teaching.
Investigate Further: Guide for Users
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Math SciNet
MathSciNet is an electronic publication offering access to a carefully maintained and easily searchable database of reviews, abstracts and bibliographic information for much of the mathematical sciences literature. This database contains over 2.8 million items and over 1.6 million direct links to original articles, and over 100,000 new items are added each year.
Investigate Further: Librarians’ Resources
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Internet Public Library
ipl2 is a public service and learning/teaching environment where students and volunteer library and information science professionals answer reference questions and maintain and build reference collections. Collections of resources from the Internet Public Library (IPL) and the Librarians’ Internet Index (LII) websites were merged in 2010 to form this resource.
Investigate Further: For Teachers & Researchers
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ERIC
Researchers can discover the articles they need through the ERIC search. You can search for peer-reviewed articles only, or articles that have full text instead of an abstract. You also can look for both types of articles in this multidisciplinary database.
Investigate Further: FAQ
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United Academics
United Academics’ goal is to connect science and society by providing a venue where academics can publish their research, where the author decides on copyright and incentive, and where the peer review becomes a test of quality rather than a barrier to publication. This site also offers a place where companies, institutes and academics can collaborate to generate new, exciting, and productive works.
Investigate Further: Blog Journal
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Citeulike
Register to use this free search engine and you’ll end up with some amazing extra tools such as the ability to store references and to share references with peers. You also can store and search your PDFs, and make new discoveries through automated article recommendations.
Investigate Further: Everyone’s library
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Microsoft Academic Search
Microsoft Academic Search is a database filled with papers on topics that range from agricultural science to social science. Primarily a scientific database, researchers can cull information through publications, journals, organizations, and keyword searches.
Investigate Further: Environmental Sciences
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Virtual Academic Resource Center
Virtual Academic Resource Center is an academic search engine that provides free access to materials from the fields of psychology, philosophy, sociology, and educational services. Users can search (and submit) books, journals, and articles for use in research.
Investigate Further: Educational Sciences
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BASE
If you’re looking for a search engine dedicated to academic open access web resources, BASE is what you need. Operated by Bielefeld University Library, BASE collects, normalizes, and indexes data, providing more than 50 million documents from more than 2,700 sources.
Investigate Further: BASE Search
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WorldWideScience
This site is a global science gateway, which allows researchers to accelerate their scientific discovery with national and international scientific databases and portals. Multilingual WorldWideScience.org provides real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed scientific literature.
Investigate Further: Advanced Search
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refseek
This academic search engine currently is in public beta, but don’t let that stop you from searching through more than one billion documents for the information you may need for your research. Lose that information overload found through regular search engines and hone in on your topic with this tool.
Investigate Further: Search Tips
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Info Mine
INFOMINE is a virtual gold rush or databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other types of information at your fingertips. Built by librarians, INFOMINE even allows you to customize your searches.
Investigate Further: How to Use INFOMINE
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Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
If you need a tool to find a federal publication, this search engine might help. The catalogue for this finding tool offers the option to find a nearby Federal Depository Library that has a particular publication as well. Search by authoring agency, title, subject, and general key word, or click on “Advanced Search” for more options.
Investigate Further: Advanced Search
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Psycline
If you’re searching for psychology and social science journals or articles, use Psycline to find what you need. This database contains over 2,000 psychology and social science journals with an easy-to-use interface to article databases.
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Library Spot
Library spot is a densely categorized and indexed search tool for data, academic researc, bibliographic material, and other bits of information useful in conducting research.
Investigate Further: Libraries Online
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Online Journals Search Engine
This search engine is dedicated to scientific searches, and users can make search-queries in different databases by using only 1 search field. This resource allows users to find, download, or buy scientific publications in up to 60 different databases.
Investigate Further: List of available Online Journals
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OpenDOAR
Based upon the Google Custom Search engine, this search tool allows users to search contents of the repositories listed in the OpenDOAR database and use the information freely for academic research. Full texts are available for most results.
Investigate Further: Search or Browse for Repositories
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Vadlo
VADLO provides a powerful search tool dedicated to the life sciences. Search for forums, cartoons, protocols, tools, PowerPoint presentations, and products, all geared to support any life science project. The PowerPoint presentations include biomedical and medical research.
Investigate Further: Search for PowerPoints
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Encyclopedia of Psychology
The Encyclopedia of Psychology offers a variety of options for support materials within their 1,726 links. Choose from the history of psychology, publications, resources, organizations, paradigms and theories, and even career options. The site can be translated into eight languages other than English.
Investigate Further: Popular Searches
