Know your tools. All of them.
Universities and companies spend serious money on research databases — and most people use a fraction of what they’re paying for. This directory profiles the databases that matter: what each one actually contains, how access works around the world, what it’s good and bad at, and every power tip we’ve published for it.
Over 100 profiles, vendor-independent and fact-checked. No sponsorships, no placements — just honest assessments to help you search smarter in the tools you already have.
Browse by category:
🎓 Academic — the curated citation indexes and subject databases researchers rely on: Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, PsycINFO, JSTOR, and more.
📊 Corporate — market, company, and news intelligence for analysts: Bloomberg, Statista, PitchBook, Factiva, Orbis, Euromonitor, and more.
🔓 Open Access — the free and open infrastructure of research: OpenAlex, Europe PMC, DOAJ, CORE, BASE, Unpaywall, arXiv, and more.
🌏 Regional — the databases the big indexes overlook: SciELO, CNKI, KCI, J-STAGE, Redalyc, Dialnet, and more.
🧰 Tools — reference managers, dedup engines, citation analysis, and AI research assistants: Zotero, Scite, Connected Papers, VOSviewer, Elicit, and more.
*Every profile links back to the newsletter issues where we put its features to work. New profiles publish weekly.*
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