Best Research Tools: Complete Comparison

Google Scholar provides a broad search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. It indexes full-text or metadata of scholarly literature and aims to rank the documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who wrote it, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.

JSTOR is a digital library providing access to a wide range of academic journals, books, and primary sources. It's particularly strong in the humanities and social sciences, offering deep archives of scholarly content. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content. It's used by researchers, students, and educators to support teaching and learning. The platform offers powerful search and discovery tools, making it easy to find relevant materials for your research. Its stable URLs ensure long-term access to content.

PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez system of information retrieval. PubMed provides access to millions of citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. It includes links to full-text articles and related resources. Its advanced search filters and MeSH terms make it easy to find highly relevant information.

Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. It covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-level subject fields: life sciences, social sciences, physical sciences and health sciences. It features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. Scopus delivers the most comprehensive overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities.

Web of Science is a subscription-based multidisciplinary citation database. It provides comprehensive citation data for a wide range of academic disciplines. Web of Science indexes publications in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. It offers a suite of tools for evaluating and analyzing research performance, including citation reports and journal impact factors. Researchers use Web of Science to discover, analyze, and manage scholarly information effectively. Its citation network allows users to trace the impact of research over time.

ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. It provides a platform for researchers to connect, share their work, and engage in discussions. It is a popular platform where researchers can upload and access publications, even if they are behind a paywall elsewhere. However, the legality of some uploads has been questioned. It fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing within the scientific community and allows researchers to track their research impact.