Google Scholar AlternativesOnly apps categorised as Academic Research Tools

The best Academic Research Tool alternative to Google Scholar is Semantic Scholar, which is free. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to Google Scholar and 16 are Academic Research Tools so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Academic Research Tool alternatives to Google Scholar are Scinapse, Scopus, Connected Papers and Bielefeld Academic Search Engine.

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Google Scholar alternatives are mainly Academic Research Tools, but if you're looking for Research Managers you can filter on that. You can also filter by region, for example EU-based alternatives if you prefer software developed in the European Union. These are just examples - use the filter bar below to find more specific alternatives to Google Scholar.
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Alternatives list

  1. Semantic Scholar (paywall free) is a science publication aggregator that collects citation-data from PubMed, CiteSeer, IEEE etc and rank each article according to the percieved number of impactful citations.

    22 Semantic Scholar alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
     
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    1
    Semantic Scholar vs Google Scholar Comments
    pkalnai
    Positive
    1

    SemanticScholar has a large corpus of works.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    • Semantic Scholar is Free and ProprietaryGoogle Scholar is also Free and Proprietary
  2. Scinapse icon
     13 likes

    Scinapse is a free search engine for academic papers. As of September 2018, it indexes more than 200 million articles from more than 40,000 journals.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
     
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    1
    Scinapse vs Google Scholar Comments
    Mohamed Usman
    Positive
    0

    Compared to other similar website, scinapase seems like, close alternative to google scholar. If they introduce scholar profile section which is under beta will make it more appealing.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    • Scinapse is Free and ProprietaryGoogle Scholar is also Free and Proprietary
  3. Scopus icon
     4 likes

    Elsevier’s Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields.

    16 Scopus alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Paid
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
     
  4. Connected Papers is a unique, visual tool to help researchers and applied scientists find and explore papers relevant to their field of work.

    22 Connected Papers alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Freemium
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
     
    |
    1
    Connected Papers vs Google Scholar Comments
    Guest
    Positive
    0

    gives a brief view of papers associated with searched paper

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    • Connected Papers is Freemium and ProprietaryGoogle Scholar is Free and Proprietary
  5. BASE is one of the world's most voluminous search engines especially for academic web resources. BASE provides more than 300 million documents from more than 10,000 content providers. You can access the full texts of about 60% of the indexed documents for free (Open Access).

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
     
  6. AMiner icon
     2 likes

    ArnetMiner (AMiner) is designed to search and perform data mining operations against academic publications on the Internet, using social network analysis to identify connections between researchers, conferences, and publications.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
     
  7. OA.mg icon
     2 likes

    OA.mg is a search engine for academic papers. Whether you are looking for a specific paper, or for research from a field, or all of an author’s works – OA.mg is the place to find it.

    17 OA.mg alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
     
  8. RefSeek icon
     2 likes

    RefSeek is a web search engine for students and researchers that aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone. RefSeek searches more than five billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
     
  9. CiteSeerX icon
     3 likes

    CiteSeerx is an evolving scientific literature digital library and search engine that has focused primarily on the literature in computer and information science.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Online
     
  10. Wispar icon
     2 likes

    Wispar is a user-friendly and privacy-friendly Android/iOS app that seamlessly searches scientific journals and articles using the Crossref and OpenAlex API. Stay updated on your preferred journals by following them and receive new article abstracts in your main feed.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Android
    • iPhone
    • Android Tablet
    • iPad
    • F-Droid
     
  11. BioSeek Mobile - Next Generation Search For Life Sciences. Fast. Efficient. Free. We process at one go multi-component searches that are normally quite time consuming. We strive to deliver the clearest representations of massive amounts of data.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Android
    • iPhone
    • Android Tablet
    • iPad
     
12 of 16 Google Scholar alternatives