Academic and Scholarly Search Engines

Academic and scholarly search engines cover broad areas of the Web in different ways. Some scholarly search engines actually focus on material from scholarly literature, while others provide directories or cluster material around academic subject areas. Academic and scholarly search engines should be your tools of choice when you are looking for Web based research material. Some types of academic search engines can also help you find citations to scholarly material within KU libraries as well as within other academic, public libraries and digital repositories.

Google Scholar 

Google Scholar has become a prominent leader on the relatively new academic search engine front. Google Scholar specializes in access to academic information by indexing scholarly material from several different source types. Google Scholar not only indexes Web based academic material, it also indexes institutional digital repositories, such as KU ScholarWorks. One will also find citations to many peer reviewed and scholarly journals. Full text access to some material will depend upon the individual publications licensing schema.

Scirus 

Scirus is a science-specific academic search engine covering over 2 million Web pages. Pinpointing features allow for excellent relevancy within search results. Scirus also indexes some scholarly journals and digital repositories.

Velocity for Life Sciences 

Velocity for the Life sciences is an academic and scholarly search engine with a particular focus on the life sciences and pharmacology. Velocity searches across Web pages and scholarly publications.

Clusty 

Clusty returns search results from numerous sources and then organizes them into groups according to a relevancy hierarchy. The ability to refine by cluster gives this search engine academic use possibilities.

Open WorldCat 

Open WorldCat is actually like a search engine to be used within another search engine. By utilizing an Open WorldCat search box, within the browser of a major search engine, search results come directly from WorldCat. WorldCat holds the cataloging data for most academic and public libraries

Librarian's Index to the Internet 

This index is a controlled directory which may have academic uses.

Yahoo! Creative Commons 

The Yahoo! Creative Commons Search primarily focuses on material that carries the Creative Commons license. The Creative Commons license is often used by those who would like to share their work with scholars and researchers.