Skip Google for Research
As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms
As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.
Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.
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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.
www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free
Additions
Updated September 22, 2023
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to expanding other people’s knowledge on this topic. Information literacy is a huge topic in high schools and universities, and one of the things teachers and librarians are struggling to help students understand is the fact that their search engine is not free of bias and may prioritize ads (or what it thinks you want to see based on your shopping experience) rather than actual information. It’s made more difficult by the fact that the technology in use is constantly evolving.
Also, big thanks to the folks who reminded me to fix the ref links in the original post. Not sure what I was thinking when I copied it over from FB, but it’s now fixed (can’t vouch for reblogs, this is Tumblr afterall).
Someone accurately noted that the bulk of the above links are databases, not search engines. The initial post called them research sites not search engines. If you want something better than Google, I would usually suggest using Duck Duck Go. Someone in the comments said it skews right, but I have not seen research or evidence to back that up, so proceed as you wish. I would recommend Firefox as a browser, and you could consider one of these search engines.
https://www.qwant.com/ - Search engine with no tracking or advertising
https://www.ecosia.org/ - Search engine that plants trees – has ads and that ad revenue runs the engine while funding tree planting
Additional Sites Recommended in the Comments
Here are some of the top sites recommended in the comments.
Academic/Reseach
Academia - platform that shares academic research
arXiv - (pronounced archive, apparently) is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for 2,328,899 scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. It is housed by Cornell University
Astrophysics Data System - The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a digital library portal for researchers in astronomy and physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS maintains three bibliographic collections containing more than 15 million records covering publications in astronomy and astrophysics, physics, and general science.
Bielefeld Academic Search Engine - BASE is a search engine specifically for academic studies texts, and contains more than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.
Bioline - This is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
Education Resources Information Center - ERIC is a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable, internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information.
JSTOR - academic digital library providing access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
PubMed - the National Institute for Health’s National Library of Medicine, comprises more than 35 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
Research Gate - founded to address the problems in the way science is created and shared. Connects the world of science and makes research open to all.
Research Papers in Economics - Volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science for RePEc.
Sci-Hub - research publication library – technically pirated content, but please note that the researchers do not get paid for publication, and will often send you a PDF of their research for free if you ask, it’s the publications that want to restrict access to paying readers
US Government Science Portal - Science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
World Cat - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where the rare book you need is.
Libraries
Boston Library History & Political Science - The Boston Library has a ton of history and poli sci resources. Big libraries often have things available digitally for free, even if you aren’t in the area.
Hathi Trust Digital Library – This library provides free digitized books from all over the world.
Internet Archive - This non-profit library houses millions of free digital books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
PDF Drive - This is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format, claiming over 225 million names. Caution advised as some users report malware may be hidden in with the valid content.
Project Gutenberg - This site provides free downloads of digital books, focusing on works with expired US copyright. Note, if you look for out-of-print books on Google, it will try to sell you books that you can actually download free from Gutenberg (I’ve tested this multiple times).
Z Library – This digital library provides ebooks for free. Currently considered a security risk by Firefox, so maybe avoid.
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Please visit my Resources for Writers page for other subject areas.
