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28 Best Academic Search Engines That make your research easier

If you’re a researcher or scholar, you know that conducting effective online research is a critical part of your job. And if you’re like most people, you’re always on the lookout for new and better ways to do it. 

This article aims to give you an edge over researchers that rely mainly on Google for their entire research process.

Table of Contents

#1. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an academic search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.

#2. ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) 

ERIC (short for educational resources information center) is a great academic search engine that focuses on education-related literature. It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and produced by the Institute of Education Sciences. 

ERIC indexes over a million articles, reports, conference papers, and other resources on all aspects of education from early childhood to higher education. So, search results are more relevant to Education on ERIC. 

ERIC is a free online database of education-related literature. 

#3. Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a “computational knowledge engine” that can answer factual questions posed in natural language. It can be a useful search tool. 

Wolfram Alpha can also be used to find academic articles. Just type in your keywords and Wolfram Alpha will generate a list of academic articles that match your query.

#4. iSEEK Education 

iSEEK is a search engine targeting students, teachers, administrators, and caregiver. It’s designed to be safe with editor-reviewed content.

iSEEK Education is free to use.

#5. BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)

CORE is an academic search engine that focuses on open access research papers. A link to the full text PDF or complete text web page is supplied for each search result. It’s academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers.

You might also like:

#7. Science.gov

#8. semantic scholar, #9. refseek.

This is one of the free search engines that feels like Yahoo with a massive directory. It could be good when you are just looking for research ideas from unexpected angles. It could lead you to some other database that you might not know such as the CIA The World Factbook, which is a great reference tool.

#10. ResearchGate 

A mixture of social networking site + forum + content databases where researchers can build their profile, share research papers, and interact with one another.

#11. DataONE Search (formerly CiteULike) 

#12. dataelixir , #13. lazyscholar – browser extension, #14. citeseerx – digital library from penstate, #15. the lens – patents search , #16. fatcat – wiki for bibliographic catalog , #17. lexis web – legal database, #18. infotopia – part of the vlrc family, #19. virtual learning resources center, #21. worldwidescience.

Over 70 countries’ databases are used on the website. When a user enters a query, it contacts databases from all across the world and shows results in both English and translated journals and academic resources.

#22. Google Books

A user can browse thousands of books on Google Books, from popular titles to old titles, to find pages that include their search terms. You can look through pages, read online reviews, and find out where to buy a hard copy once you find the book you are interested in.

#23. DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)

#24. baidu scholar, #25. pubmed central, #26. medline®.

MEDLINE® is a paid subscription database for life sciences and biomedicine that includes more than 28 million citations to journal articles. For finding reliable, carefully chosen health information, Medline Plus provides a powerful search tool and even a dictionary.

Defunct Academic Search Engines 

#27. microsoft academic  .

Microsoft Academic

#28. Scizzle

Final thoughts.

There are many academic search engines that can help researchers and scholars find the information they need. This list provides a variety of options, starting with more familiar engines and moving on to less well-known ones. 

10 thoughts on “28 Best Academic Search Engines That make your research easier”

Thank you so much Joannah..I have found this information useful to me as librarian in an academic library

You are welcome! We are happy to hear that!

Thank You Team, for providing a comprehensive list of academic search engines that can help make research easier for students and scholars. The variety of search engines included offers a range of options for finding scholarly articles, journals, and other academic resources. The article also provides a brief summary of each search engine’s features, which helps in determining which one is the best fit for a specific research topic. Overall, this article is a valuable resource for anyone looking for a quick and easy way to access a wealth of academic information.

We appreciate your support and thank you for your kind words. We will continue to provide valuable resources for students and researchers in the future. Please let us know if you have any further questions or suggestions.

No more questions Thank You

I cannot thank you enough!!! thanks alot 🙂

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Expontum – Helps researchers quickly find knowledge gaps and identify what research projects have been completed before. Expontum is free, open access, and available to all globally with no paid versions of the site. Automated processes scan research article information 24/7 so this website is constantly updating. By looking at over 35 million research publications (240 million by the end of 2023), the site has 146 million tagged research subjects and 122 million tagged research attributes. Learn more about methodology and sources on the Expontum About Page ( https://www.expontum.com/about.php )

Hey Ryan, I clicked and checked your site and thought it was very relevant to our reader. Thank you for sharing. And, we will be reviewing your site soon.

Sounds good! Thanks, Joannah!

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arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Materials on this site are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.

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• Astrophysics ( astro-ph new , recent , search ) Astrophysics of Galaxies ; Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics ; Earth and Planetary Astrophysics ; High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena ; Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics ; Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
• Condensed Matter ( cond-mat new , recent , search ) Disordered Systems and Neural Networks ; Materials Science ; Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics ; Other Condensed Matter ; Quantum Gases ; Soft Condensed Matter ; Statistical Mechanics ; Strongly Correlated Electrons ; Superconductivity
• General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology ( gr-qc new , recent , search )
• High Energy Physics - Experiment ( hep-ex new , recent , search )
• High Energy Physics - Lattice ( hep-lat new , recent , search )
• High Energy Physics - Phenomenology ( hep-ph new , recent , search )
• High Energy Physics - Theory ( hep-th new , recent , search )
• Mathematical Physics ( math-ph new , recent , search )
• Nonlinear Sciences ( nlin new , recent , search ) includes: Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems ; Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases ; Chaotic Dynamics ; Exactly Solvable and Integrable Systems ; Pattern Formation and Solitons
• Nuclear Experiment ( nucl-ex new , recent , search )
• Nuclear Theory ( nucl-th new , recent , search )
• Physics ( physics new , recent , search ) includes: Accelerator Physics ; Applied Physics ; Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics ; Atomic and Molecular Clusters ; Atomic Physics ; Biological Physics ; Chemical Physics ; Classical Physics ; Computational Physics ; Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability ; Fluid Dynamics ; General Physics ; Geophysics ; History and Philosophy of Physics ; Instrumentation and Detectors ; Medical Physics ; Optics ; Physics and Society ; Physics Education ; Plasma Physics ; Popular Physics ; Space Physics
• Quantum Physics ( quant-ph new , recent , search )

Mathematics

• Mathematics ( math new , recent , search ) includes: (see detailed description ): Algebraic Geometry ; Algebraic Topology ; Analysis of PDEs ; Category Theory ; Classical Analysis and ODEs ; Combinatorics ; Commutative Algebra ; Complex Variables ; Differential Geometry ; Dynamical Systems ; Functional Analysis ; General Mathematics ; General Topology ; Geometric Topology ; Group Theory ; History and Overview ; Information Theory ; K-Theory and Homology ; Logic ; Mathematical Physics ; Metric Geometry ; Number Theory ; Numerical Analysis ; Operator Algebras ; Optimization and Control ; Probability ; Quantum Algebra ; Representation Theory ; Rings and Algebras ; Spectral Theory ; Statistics Theory ; Symplectic Geometry

Computer Science

• Computing Research Repository ( CoRR new , recent , search ) includes: (see detailed description ): Artificial Intelligence ; Computation and Language ; Computational Complexity ; Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science ; Computational Geometry ; Computer Science and Game Theory ; Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition ; Computers and Society ; Cryptography and Security ; Data Structures and Algorithms ; Databases ; Digital Libraries ; Discrete Mathematics ; Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing ; Emerging Technologies ; Formal Languages and Automata Theory ; General Literature ; Graphics ; Hardware Architecture ; Human-Computer Interaction ; Information Retrieval ; Information Theory ; Logic in Computer Science ; Machine Learning ; Mathematical Software ; Multiagent Systems ; Multimedia ; Networking and Internet Architecture ; Neural and Evolutionary Computing ; Numerical Analysis ; Operating Systems ; Other Computer Science ; Performance ; Programming Languages ; Robotics ; Social and Information Networks ; Software Engineering ; Sound ; Symbolic Computation ; Systems and Control

Quantitative Biology

• Quantitative Biology ( q-bio new , recent , search ) includes: (see detailed description ): Biomolecules ; Cell Behavior ; Genomics ; Molecular Networks ; Neurons and Cognition ; Other Quantitative Biology ; Populations and Evolution ; Quantitative Methods ; Subcellular Processes ; Tissues and Organs

Quantitative Finance

• Quantitative Finance ( q-fin new , recent , search ) includes: (see detailed description ): Computational Finance ; Economics ; General Finance ; Mathematical Finance ; Portfolio Management ; Pricing of Securities ; Risk Management ; Statistical Finance ; Trading and Market Microstructure
• Statistics ( stat new , recent , search ) includes: (see detailed description ): Applications ; Computation ; Machine Learning ; Methodology ; Other Statistics ; Statistics Theory

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The top list of academic research databases

2. Web of Science

5. ieee xplore, 6. sciencedirect, 7. directory of open access journals (doaj), get the most out of your academic research database, frequently asked questions about academic research databases, related articles.

Whether you are writing a thesis , dissertation, or research paper it is a key task to survey prior literature and research findings. More likely than not, you will be looking for trusted resources, most likely peer-reviewed research articles.

Academic research databases make it easy to locate the literature you are looking for. We have compiled the top list of trusted academic resources to help you get started with your research:

Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Besides searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator .

• Coverage: 90.6 million core records
• References: N/A
• Discipline: Multidisciplinary
• Access options: Limited free preview, full access by institutional subscription only
• Provider: Elsevier

Web of Science also known as Web of Knowledge is the second big bibliographic database. Usually, academic institutions provide either access to Web of Science or Scopus on their campus network for free.

• Coverage: approx. 100 million items
• References: 1.4 billion
• Access options: institutional subscription only
• Provider: Clarivate (formerly Thomson Reuters)

PubMed is the number one resource for anyone looking for literature in medicine or biological sciences. PubMed stores abstracts and bibliographic details of more than 30 million papers and provides full text links to the publisher sites or links to the free PDF on PubMed Central (PMC) .

• Coverage: approx. 35 million items
• Discipline: Medicine and Biological Sciences
• Access options: free
• Provider: NIH

For education sciences, ERIC is the number one destination. ERIC stands for Education Resources Information Center, and is a database that specifically hosts education-related literature.

• Coverage: approx. 1.6 million items
• Discipline: Education
• Provider: U.S. Department of Education

IEEE Xplore is the leading academic database in the field of engineering and computer science. It's not only journal articles, but also conference papers, standards and books that can be search for.

• Coverage: approx. 6 million items
• Discipline: Engineering
• Provider: IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

ScienceDirect is the gateway to the millions of academic articles published by Elsevier, 1.4 million of which are open access. Journals and books can be searched via a single interface.

• Coverage: approx. 19.5 million items

The DOAJ is an open-access academic database that can be accessed and searched for free.

• Coverage: over 8 million records
• Provider: DOAJ

JSTOR is another great resource to find research papers. Any article published before 1924 in the United States is available for free and JSTOR also offers scholarships for independent researchers.

• Coverage: more than 12 million items
• Provider: ITHAKA

Start using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with PubMed and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Scopus is one of the two big commercial, bibliographic databases that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. Beside searching for research articles, Scopus also provides academic journal rankings, author profiles, and an h-index calculator .

PubMed is the number one resource for anyone looking for literature in medicine or biological sciences. PubMed stores abstracts and bibliographic details of more than 30 million papers and provides full text links to the publisher sites or links to the free PDF on PubMed Central (PMC)

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Research articles

Early intermittent hyperlipidaemia alters tissue macrophages to fuel atherosclerosis.

• Minoru Takaoka
• Xiaohui Zhao
• Ziad Mallat

A γδ T cell–IL-3 axis controls allergic responses through sensory neurons

A γδ T cell–IL-3 signalling axis is defined that controls the allergen responsiveness of cutaneous sensory neurons, leading to evidence for an immune rheostat that governs sensory neuronal responses to allergens on first exposure.

• Cameron H. Flayer
• Isabela J. Kernin
• Caroline L. Sokol

Frontostriatal salience network expansion in individuals in depression

Precision functional mapping shows that the frontostriatal salience network occupies nearly twice as much of the cortex in people with depression, and this was unaffected by mood changes and detected in children before onset of symptoms.

• Charles J. Lynch
• Immanuel G. Elbau
• Conor Liston

A local-to-global emissions inventory of macroplastic pollution

A global macroplastic pollution emissions inventory and methodology is developed using machine learning and probabilistic material flow analysis, to identify hotspots across more than 50,000 municipalities worldwide from five land-based plastic waste emission sources.

• Joshua W. Cottom
• Costas A. Velis

A climate threshold for ocean deoxygenation during the Early Cretaceous

Rapid ocean deoxygenation during the Early Cretaceous OAE1a is shown to provide evidence for a strong link between volcanic CO 2 emissions, weathering and ocean oxygen content that is characterized by a climate threshold.

• Kohen W. Bauer
• N. Ryan McKenzie
• Sean A. Crowe

Recurrent evolution and selection shape structural diversity at the amylase locus

The impact of structural variation on the evolution of the amylase genes is explored using human pangenome resources and ancient DNA data.

• Davide Bolognini
• Alma Halgren
• Peter H. Sudmant

CDK5–cyclin B1 regulates mitotic fidelity

Cyclin B1 is a mitotic co-factor of CDK5.

• Xiao-Feng Zheng
• Aniruddha Sarkar
• Dipanjan Chowdhury

Immune system adaptation during gender-affirming testosterone treatment

Examination of immunological changes in transgender individuals undergoing gender-affirming testosterone treatment reveals sex hormone-regulated pathways in humans and explains sex-divergent responses in cisgender individuals.

• Tadepally Lakshmikanth
• Camila Consiglio
• Petter Brodin

Diverse viral cas genes antagonize CRISPR immunity

We demonstrate that phages have co-opted cas genes from CRISPR defence systems, which subsequently evolved anti-defence functions.

• Mark A. Katz
• Edith M. Sawyer
• Alexander J. Meeske

Signatures of magnetism control by flow of angular momentum

Signatures of magnetism control by the flow of angular momentum are observed in Pt/Al/Fe/GaAs(001) multilayers by the application of an in-plane charge current in Pt.

Frequency ratio of the 229m Th nuclear isomeric transition and the 87 Sr atomic clock

A vacuum ultraviolet frequency comb is used to directly excite the narrow 229 Th nuclear clock transition in a solid-state CaF 2 host material, marking the start of nuclear-based solid-state optical clocks.

• Chuankun Zhang

Gravitational instability in a planet-forming disk

Observations of gravitational instability in the disk around AB Aurigae using deep observations of 13 CO and C 18 O line emission provide evidence that giant protoplanets can be formed from collapsing fragments of vast spiral arms.

• Jessica Speedie
• Ruobing Dong
• Jun Hashimoto

An aberrant immune–epithelial progenitor niche drives viral lung sequelae

CD8 + T cell–macrophage interactions have a central role in impairing alveolar regeneration and driving fibrotic sequelae after acute viral pneumonia in a mouse model of long COVID.

• Harish Narasimhan
• In Su Cheon

A polymer-like ultrahigh-strength metal alloy

A polymer-like ultrahigh-strength TiNi alloy was fabricated by a simple three-step process to give a combination of a polymer-like ultralow elastic modulus and a steel-like ultrahigh yield strength over a wide temperature range, and such exotic properties arise from a unique strain glass state.

• Yuanchao Ji
• Xiaobing Ren

DNA methylation controls stemness of astrocytes in health and ischaemia

Single-cell analysis of the transcriptome, chromatin accessibility and methylome of adult neural stem cells and astrocytes demonstrates that stemness is driven by methylation profiles distinct from those of astrocytes.

• Lukas P. M. Kremer
• Santiago Cerrizuela
• Ana Martin-Villalba

Global marine microbial diversity and its potential in bioprospecting

Analysis of 43,191 genomes obtained from publicly available marine bacterial and archaeal metagenome data provides insights into marine bacterial evolution, CRISPR–Cas defence and antibiotic resistance genes, and demonstrates the potential of marine metagenomes for biotechnological applications.

• Jianwei Chen
• Yangyang Jia
• Guangyi Fan

Alternating high-fat diet enhances atherosclerosis by neutrophil reprogramming

Re-exposure to a high-fat diet in mice led to emergency myelopoiesis and increased neutrophils in the blood, which infiltrated plaques and released neutrophil extracellular traps, exacerbating atherosclerosis.

• Jean-Rémi Lavillegrand
• Rida Al-Rifai
• Hafid Ait-Oufella

Mechanisms that clear mutations drive field cancerization in mammary tissue

The authors use lineage tracing to map the fate of wild-type and Brca1 −/− ;Trp53 −/− cells in the adult mouse mammary gland, identifying three layers of protection that limit the spread of mutant cells at the expense of allowing a minority of mutant cells to expand, which leads to field cancerization.

• Marta Ciwinska
• Hendrik A. Messal
• Jacco van Rheenen

The hepatitis C virus envelope protein complex is a dimer of heterodimers

Structural studies of a homodimeric arrangement of hepatitis C virus envelope E1/E2 heterodimers reveals the molecular basis of intracomplex interactions and  provides mechanistic insights into neutralizing antibody evasion and membrane fusion with host cells.

• Elias Honerød Augestad
• Christina Holmboe Olesen
• Jannick Prentoe

A pathology foundation model for cancer diagnosis and prognosis prediction

A study describes the development of a generalizable foundation machine learning framework to extract pathology imaging features for cancer diagnosis and prognosis prediction.

• Junhan Zhao
• Kun-Hsing Yu

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Home > Blog > Tips for Online Students > The Ultimate Student Guide To Finding Credible Sources

Tips for Online Students , Tips for Students

The Ultimate Student Guide To Finding Credible Sources

Updated: June 19, 2024

Published: January 1, 2020

When it comes to writing a research paper, it’s crucial that you use credible sources to make sure that the information you are stating is actually true. Knowing the difference between credible sources and unreliable sources doesn’t always come so easily with endless information flooding the internet. Thankfully, there are some simple tips that you can use to ensure that you are always using credible sources for research.

What is a Research Paper?

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that uses original research on a specific topic. There are many different types of research papers, ranging from a high school term paper to a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation.

Photo by  Wallace Chuck  from  Pexels

How to start a search for sources, 1. start simple.

If you’re wondering how to find sources for a research paper, the easiest and best way to start is simple! Just try browsing through some common search engines to see what you find.

2. Cross Wikipedia off

Wikipedia, although it’s a massive pool of information, should always be avoided when writing a research paper since it allows the public to edit information. Sites such as these often run the risk of lacking accuracy, and is not one of the most credible sources for research.

3. Yes to scholarly databases

Scholarly databases are your best friend when it comes to finding credible sources for research. Online scholarly databases that can be trusted and are known to provide useful information for students include LexisNexis and EBSCO.

4. Newspapers and magazines

Although sometimes biased, newspapers and magazines can also be a great place to find information about current events.

5. The library

While the library seems to be the most obvious place to find information, somehow it’s often forgotten when it comes to research in the modern age. Don’t forget how useful it can truly be!

Types of Credible Sources for Research

1. what are some credible websites.

Many online sources do not necessarily contain information that is correct or has been checked. That’s why it’s of utmost importance to make sure that you’re using the right websites for your research, with government and educational websites generally being the most reliable.

Credible sources for research include: science.gov, The World Factbook, US Census Bureau, UK Statistics, and Encyclopedia Britannica.

2. What are some credible journal articles?

When it comes to journal articles, determining how credible they are comes much easier than other sources. This is generally due to the fact that many of these websites will include valuable information such as how many times the article has been cited, and if its been peer reviewed.

Some great examples of reliable websites for journal articles include Google Scholar, Oxford Academic, Microsoft Academic, Cornell University Library, and SAGE Publishing.

If you are ever not sure how to find credible sources, then there’s the CRAAP test, which takes into account the Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose of the article. Take all of these factors into consideration before using a source and determining whether or not it’s credible enough. Even if it takes more time, you’ll be saving yourself tons of time in the long run by not using unreliable sources.

Photo by  Canva Studio  from  Pexels

3. what are some credible news sources.

When it comes to news articles, more caution must be taken since it’s hard to know which sources are truly reliable and unbiased. The CRAAP test is also useful in this type of article for research.

A few examples of credible news sources include The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The Washington Post.

The Credibility of a Source

As you search for your research information, you will surely come across the question of how to find credible sources for a research paper. Here are some criteria to focus on to ensure that you only use the most credible of sources.

1. What’s the depth of it?

Always look at the depth of an article, not just the written content. See how long the article is, and if it contains the necessary information such as an abstract, a reference list, and documented data.

2. Who is reading it?

When judging the credibility of an article, it’s important to always ask yourself who the target audience of the article is. Sometimes, sources have a specific goal in mind and it can create certain biases.

3. What’s the goal?

Just as you should do with the audience, also ask yourself what the article is trying to achieve. What is their ultimate goal and how are they persuading you of that?

4. Who wrote it?

Always ask yourself who wrote the article and how reputable they are in the specific field. Look at what other published works they have as well.

5. Can it be trusted?

Overall, it’s key to ask yourself how reputable the source is. What kind of website is it published on? Look at the big picture.

6. Is it relevant to now?

Look at the date of the article, or about the specific things they are mentioning in the article. If it’s from a few years ago, it’s probably not too relevant to your current research.

7. Can it be proven?

While an article may sound incredibly convincing, many people have a way with words and persuasion. Stop and ask yourself whether or not what they are claiming can actually be proven.

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How to evaluate source credibility.

By using unreliable sources in your research, it can discredit your status, which is why it’s incredibly important to make sure that any information you are using is up-to-date and accurate.

Here’s how to find credible sources.

1. What is a credible source?

Generally, materials that have been published within the past 10 years are considered to be credible sources for research. Another important factor to consider is the author — if they are well known and respected in their specific fields, that’s also generally a sign that the article is credible. Educational and government-run websites (.gov, .edu) tend to also be a safe source to use, as well as academic databases. Google Scholar is also a no-fail source for reliable information.

2. What is a potentially unreliable source?

Anything that is out of date, meaning it’s been published more than 10 years ago should be avoided. Materials published on social media platforms such as Facebook or personal blogs don’t tend to be the most credible. Always make sure that an article contains proper citations and that the website you are using ends in .com or .org.

Free Resources For Learning

There are many free resources for research available known as open educational resources . They are licensed for free use, with the intention of teaching. They can be determined as credible sources for research if they have a Creative Common license, and if the author has proven to be an expert in their field. Always make sure that the content you are using contains no biases.

Sites For Scholarly Research

When performing scholarly research, it’s extra important to make sure that your sources are credible. Government-run research is considered credible, but beware of any political sites. University and educational websites also tend to be reliable, but still take everything you read with a grain of salt. Company websites also tend to be reliable, although their ultimate goal is usually to promote a product. Organizations which are .org websites can be professional and reliable, however, sometimes they also have their own interests.

Which Sites Can Be Relied On

The internet has no shortage of information out there. That’s why you’ll need these handy tips to determine which to use, and how to distinguish through the vast choices without feeling overwhelmed.

List of Credible Research Sources to Consider

1. government entities.

These websites tend to be reliable since they are highly regulated. Examples include the CIA World Factbook and the United States Justice Statistics.

2. Research Think Tanks

Examples of reliable research think tanks include Rand Corporation, Pew Research Center and The Milken Institute.

3. Academic Libraries and Databases

ProQuest, Scopus, and Jstor are great examples of academic libraries and databases that can be trusted.

4. Professional Standards Organizations

The American Bar Association and The American Psychological Association (APA) are highly credible sources when it comes to professional standards.

How to Write a Research Paper: Step-by-Step

Now that you’re an expert on finding credible sources for research, you’re ready to go! But how do you even start to write a research paper? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

For starters, it’s important to get clear instructions from your professor on what they want. The next step is to start brainstorming ideas for a topic of research. Once you’ve decided and feel confident about it, you’re ready to create your outline and plan out the goal of your research paper.

Befriend your librarian and start to search for quality and credible sources through a variety of means. Make sure you understand your topic from top to bottom before you start writing.  As you write, be sure to always keep things factual, and that you finalize your thesis statement throughout your paper — not just at the end. That’s what’s going to guide your writing. Be sure to always keep format in mind, never forget to cite your sources, and to never skip those edits and final checks.

Now you are ready to write a high-quality, fact-driven research paper that’s sure to impress your professors.

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At UoPeople, our blog writers are thinkers, researchers, and experts dedicated to curating articles relevant to our mission: making higher education accessible to everyone. Read More

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Using AgentM to watch for new research papers of interest

I’m getting enough of the pieces of AgentM in place that I’m able to get it to do useful things. I wrote a small program (ok AgentM wrote part of it) that fetches the last days worth of research papers from arxiv.org , filters them to the papers related to topics I care about, and then projects those filtered papers to a uniform markdown format for easy scanning:

It uses gpt-4o-mini so it’s cost effective to run and it took 6 or 7 minutes in total to process 553 papers. Here’s the meat of the code:

I did another pass other the 81 papers it selected as being on topic and had the model select the top 10 papers for the day using another projection:

Automating Knowledge Discovery from Scientific Literature via LLMs: A Dual-Agent Approach with Progressive Ontology Prompting

Read more This paper introduces a novel framework combining large language models (LLMs) with a dual-agent system to enhance knowledge extraction from scientific literature, achieving significant improvements in annotation accuracy.

why The integration of LLMs with a dual-agent system for knowledge extraction is a significant advancement, potentially transforming how scientific literature is analyzed and utilized.

Urban Mobility Assessment Using LLMs

Read more This work proposes an AI-based approach for synthesizing travel surveys using LLMs, addressing privacy concerns and demonstrating effectiveness across various U.S. metropolitan areas.

why The application of LLMs in urban mobility assessment offers a novel solution to privacy issues in travel surveys, with implications for urban planning and policy-making.

Towards Human-Level Understanding of Complex Process Engineering Schematics: A Pedagogical, Introspective Multi-Agent Framework for Open-Domain Question Answering

Read more The paper presents a multi-agent framework for interpreting process diagrams, enhancing data privacy and explainability while achieving superior performance in open-domain question answering tasks.

why This research enhances the understanding of complex engineering schematics, which is crucial for industries relying on process engineering, improving both privacy and explainability.

Classification of Safety Events at Nuclear Sites using Large Language Models

Read more This research develops an LLM-based classifier to categorize safety records at nuclear power stations, aiming to improve the efficiency and accuracy of safety classification processes.

why Improving safety classification at nuclear sites is critical for operational safety and regulatory compliance, making this application of LLMs highly impactful.

Non-instructional Fine-tuning: Enabling Instruction-Following Capabilities in Pre-trained Language Models without Instruction-Following Data

Read more The paper explores a novel approach to fine-tuning LLMs for instruction-following capabilities using non-instructional data, potentially broadening the scope of LLM applications.

why This approach could significantly expand the versatility of LLMs, allowing them to perform tasks without explicit instruction-following data, which is a major step forward in AI development.

Zero-Shot Visual Reasoning by Vision-Language Models: Benchmarking and Analysis

Read more This study benchmarks vision-language models’ zero-shot visual reasoning capabilities, revealing insights into their performance and limitations in complex reasoning tasks.

why Understanding the zero-shot capabilities of vision-language models is crucial for their application in areas requiring complex visual reasoning, such as autonomous vehicles and robotics.

Toward Large Language Models as a Therapeutic Tool: Comparing Prompting Techniques to Improve GPT-Delivered Problem-Solving Therapy

Read more The research assesses the impact of prompt engineering on LLMs delivering psychotherapy, highlighting the potential of AI in addressing mental health needs.

why The potential use of LLMs in psychotherapy could revolutionize mental health care, making therapy more accessible and personalized.

HoneyComb: A Flexible LLM-Based Agent System for Materials Science

Read more This paper introduces HoneyComb, an LLM-based agent system tailored for materials science, significantly improving task performance and accuracy.

why The application of LLMs in materials science could accelerate research and development in this field, leading to faster innovation and discovery.

Sequence to Sequence Reward Modeling: Improving RLHF by Language Feedback

Read more The study proposes a novel reward modeling method that enhances reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) by utilizing language feedback, improving alignment with human preferences.

why Enhancing RLHF with language feedback could improve the alignment of AI systems with human values and preferences, which is essential for ethical AI development.

The creative psychometric item generator: a framework for item generation and validation using large language models

Read more This research develops a framework for generating valid creativity assessments using LLMs, demonstrating their potential in automating creativity testing processes.

why Automating creativity assessments with LLMs could transform educational and psychological testing, making it more efficient and accessible.

This is pretty awesome! I am tempted to write the underlying library in python.

I setup a placeholder GitHub project and would happily add you as a contributor.

That would be awesome!

My git user is icdev2dev. Thanks !

This is what I was thinking about:

I was just chatting with a long time Microsoft colleague (we created the Microsoft Bot Framework together) and he’s excited to create a .NET version of AgentM.

We were discussing that achieving absolute parity across languages isn’t super critical because you really want to lean into the strengths and paradigms of each language. What feels natural to a JavaScript developer isn’t going to feel as natural to a Python developer and it’s definitely not going to feel natural to a .net developer.

The important part is to maintain the spirit of AgentM across languages. To that end I’ll leave it up to you and others to determine what that means for Python.

That’s right.

But as I am thinking more about it, I believe that we shou;d also build in failure tolerance into the framework.

For example, if I have shown a set of sentences (amongst many such sets) to the LLM for the purpose of doing some labeling on sentences,I don’t want to lose that showing if the (distributed) job suddenly fails in between. It should be able to restart for the remaining jobs, complete those and then return the function to the caller.

The semantics of the threads allows for this distibuted jobs to fail and be restarted, I think.

I believe that that might be also what openAI might be pursuing as well (long lived jobs).

Yeah that’s a good suggestion…

@icdev2dev I just finished getting AgentM to convert all of its JS code to Python and it actually didn’t do too bad of a job. It’s easily 80% of the way there.

It got paths to some of the components wrong because it assumed everything was relative and in the same folder but given that it could only see one file at a time I think it did a good job. I told it which libraries I wanted it to use and it followed all of that guidance:

I’ll check the generated code into the python repo shortly.

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Speaker 1: When you first go to Perplexity, it looks like this. This is perplexity.ai and first of all, you can see it's very, very simply laid out. Where knowledge begins. Come on now, don't big note yourself. And you've got this, ask anything. You can see you've got options down here of maybe things you'd be interested in, but we're interested in academic research, they're no good to us. So, this is a very, very familiar layout for those that are used to something like ChatGPT. And asking anything in here is where it all starts. Now, there's a few things you need to know about even in here. You've got CoPilot. What is CoPilot? CoPilot is where you have this kind of companion, which will not only just sort of like work out what you actually want, but it will ask clarifying questions to make sure you get the perfect answer every single time. So, here I've always put CoPilot on. Because I'm on pro, I'm a pro. I don't know why they're always called pro. I want to be called something awesome, like Mr. Wizard. That's what I'd pay for, I'd pay more for that. But when you're on pro, you get like 600 CoPilot searches a day, but on free, you get five, which is probably enough for most of the things people want to be doing daily. And then down here, you've got focus. If you click on focus, you've got all. You've got academic, you've got writing, you've got Wolfram Alpha, you've got YouTube, you've got Reddit. So, clearly, this is the one we'd be interested in, academic. But I quite often just leave it on all, because in the early stages of using this for research, I do actually just want to see what's out there. Later on, when I'm looking for specific literature, and maybe it's not giving me what I want, I can say, you know what, just look in the academic world. And then, of course, we can attach stuff. There's stuff coming up about attachments later on, which really, really blew me away, so stay tuned. And you ask a question. So, the first question I asked it was up here. I am starting a PhD, and asking my supervisor questions is still a little daunting, and they smell like coffee. Can you please give me review papers about transparent electrodes from the past couple of years to get me started? So, this is where Copilot popped up. It asked me a question. It said, which field are you interested in? Is it physics? Is it chemistry? Is it material science? And I said, I want chemistry and material science. And then it started searching the web for these sorts of questions. Now, it was searching the web because I had it on all rather than academic. I'll show you what academic does in a little bit. But then it found down here, you can see it found 19 sources, and then it gives you your answer. The answer is always very nicely formatted. I do like the fact it kind of, you know, puts it in this numbered list, and you get these little pop-outs here where you can click on it and you go to the reference. Now, I asked it for review papers, and so here you can see that it is a review, and it was from 2020. Hmm, close enough, but I feel like I can get a little bit sort of like later in terms of the review papers I would want to read. And then I can click through this one. Okay, transparent electrodes for organic optoelectronic devices. I can click that one. And to be honest with you, I have been relatively impressed by the sorts of papers it's managed to find. Now, this one is from 2014, still a little bit too old, if I'm gonna be absolutely honest, especially for this research field. But I think I can ask a follow-up question and just say, you know what, get papers from the past, you know, few years. This was quite a broad search. I did say from the past couple of years. It didn't really catch onto that. But remember, this is always a conversation, so if it's not giving you what you want, you can just say, hey, now give me this and instruct it to do what you actually want it to do. But it gets interesting when we want to look for specific papers. I used this prompt. I'm a postdoc researcher and I'm stuck on the postdoc treadmill. My supervisor is away on a sabbatical, which we all know means is a holiday that is tax deductible. Give me five and I said recent papers on nanomaterials for transparent electrodes that I can use to impress them when they get back. So this is where Copilot once again jumped in and it wanted me to sort of tell it what I was interested in. Here I chose performance and it was really easy. I just selected between three options and I said I want to know about performance. And then based on that, it searched the web and it went away and I was interested to see whether or not actually I lied before. I'm a big fat liar. This was all, this was using all. But because I was asking for papers, it did only actually provide me with really sort of like academic responses, which is really great, which is why quite often I just leave this on all. I don't want to limit it to say, you know, only look at academic papers. But you can do that if you feel like it's giving you too broad of a result. So here once again, we get this numbered list and I was sort of very happy to see that for example, this is 2023. Brilliant. So it has actually delivered on what I wanted, which was the recent papers. So you can ask it for recent papers and it does deliver, which is really fantastic. I'm amazed at the number of things that actually sort of able to sort of bubble to the surface just with one simple, easy prompt. So here this is from 2022. So yes, this is exactly what I would want to know if I was in this field right now. Really great and really powerful. Well done perplexity. And look, this is where it gets really powerful. Go down to settings and these are the things that people quite often ask me on this channel. They say, what about data? If I upload something, is it going to become part of their training model? Here you can turn it off, which I really, really like. And then down here, we've got all of the different ways that the AI model works. When you've got pro, you can change between different settings, which I really like. So here for AI model, we've got default, we've got experimental, we've got GPT-4, latest model by OpenAI, we've got Claude. So for one payment, you can get access to all of these models. Instead of just using chat GPT, you've now got access to a range of different other models, which is just brilliant. Image generation, if that's important for you, you can use default or DALI. And it comes with a pro discord, pro support, all that sort of stuff. But those are the most important things in the settings that people are often worried about. Really great, well done perplexity. But it gets even more powerful. I was amazed at what this was able to do with images. Just a couple of months back, we were amazed at chat GPT's vision. Now, vision has come to perplexity. Let's check it out. I was amazed at what it could do. Here, I've got a simple prompt. I am reading a paper and I don't understand this image. I don't wanna spend too much time understanding it because it's a little boring. Can you explain it to me? Once again, Copilot popped up. It asked me an understanding question, which I can't even remember what it was. But I clicked on through and I said, look at this image. It was like a simple image. You see it's got a little bit of small text. It's got arrows. It's got lots of really confusing components. If it can pick out the process in this, it could do it for almost any schematic that you generate or you find online. Look, there's an arrow going backwards. There's curly arrows. Oh my God, it's so confusing, even for a human. How does this deal with it? Well, so it says, the image you've provided appears to be a schematic representation of a process for fabricating a type of composite material likely involving carbon nanotubes and a polymer substrate. It even picks up later silver nanowires. And it says possibly silver nanowires in IPA. And it picks out the solvent isopropyl alcohol as well. All of that from this image where it's not written out at all. PEN plus epoxy, PEN. Like it is just, just incredible. So it knows that we have to prepare a nanomaterial suspension, yes. It knows that we have to filtrate and format the nanoparticle film. Then it knows that it's a transfer process. Then it knows there's an application of a polymer matrix. It just knows, it just knows. That's amazing to me. And if you were to upload the figure caption alongside this, I'm sure that it would just be able to explain almost anything. And then you can ask follow-up questions like how do I do this myself? What are the most important things that I should know about this process? All of those little things just will help you understand the paper from figures. Just incredible. But it gets even better. You can currently upload four images at a time. And I said, these are images from a peer-reviewed paper that I'm writing. It's currently in draft stage and I hate it with my entire being. Mm. We've all been there. Can you help me create a story and order from these figures? So when you're writing a peer-reviewed paper or even like a chapter draft that you're gonna give to your supervisor, you want to create stories. Stories are what attract people. And if you're not sure where to start, this is a great way of doing it. Put in the main figures. So here I've got that figure. I've got this figure. And they can be a little bit confusing because like I said, I've not given it any context other than these figures. They've got no figure captions, just the numbers and the stuff it can make out from this image. So overall, it says, here we are. To create a coherent story and order from the figures, we can construct a narrative around the development, characterization, and performance, and evaluation of composite materials. It consists of silver nanowires and single-walled carbon nanotubes. I did not tell it that that's what I was doing, but for some reason, somewhere in here, it has, oh, here we are, silver nanowires. And then down here, it's got silver nanowire loading. And then here, it's got single-walled carbon nanotubes. So it knows it from these little sort of like tips and little clues I give it in the figures, which is just incredible, something that's never, ever been able to be done before online with AI, just incredible. ChatGPT does something similar. I would argue that it's a little bit better, but still, this is very powerful, and you can go on to ask more questions. So sheet resistance versus silver nanowire loading, microscopy, microscopy and spectroscopy analysis, and mechanical flexibility test. So you'll notice that it actually didn't do these in order. It actually put this one at the end. That's not the order I uploaded it. So it is making decisions about the story it wants to tell. And then down here, it does tell you, like, we should suggest directions for future research. We should have a conclusion. And then it says here, by following this structure, you can create a logical flow that guides the reader through the development and evaluation of silver nanowires and single-walled carbon nanotube composite material, culminating in a clear understanding of its properties and potential applications. That sounds like the perfect paper for me to be writing. If you don't want these images to go to its training model, you can turn that off. Absolutely brilliant. Something that ChatGPT doesn't give you if that is important to you. And another way you can use perplexity for research is this next thing, which is super powerful. Let's check it out. Reading papers is a massive pain in the ass. So here, I said, this is a paper, and I uploaded it as a PDF by just adding it here. So you can say, attach images, text, or PDF. So I added one of my papers. And I said, this is a paper that I'm reading as part of my PhD. If I read another one, I'm going to throw my computer out of the window. Can you summarize the key points from this paper so I don't have to read it all? Once again, Copilot popped up. Bing. Or no, that's a different brand, Copilot Perplexity. Ooh, perplex, I guess it would say. Here it says, understanding the question, then it reads the file, and then it searches the web because it knows what I want. And then, because it had the title, it bound it online in a number of places, and then it gives me an answer. A really, really detailed answer, a really powerful answer, super easy, because I think it uses information that it found online and from the PDF itself. And you can see that it's got objective, methodology, performance, application in organic photovoltaic devices, advantages over ITO, and conclusion. So I can go on and ask it stuff. What is the main focus of the paper? I could ask it what the limitations is, what the next sort of step should be, if I should continue this line of inquiry, for example. All of those things from a single paper and just a click of a button and a simple prompt, really good. And here's another little cheeky thing that it provided me that I was very pleased with. For some reason, it's found a YouTube video from one of my old collaborators who's now, I'll turn the volume on, who is now a associate professor at QUT. I'm very proud of her. Well done, Sonia. But here she is doing all of stuff. So it actually sort of like looked at the collaborators and brought her up as well. So I know where she is at the moment, which is like another little sneaky tidbit that I didn't even know it would do, something that ChatGPT doesn't do. So I am very, very impressed with Perplexity. I'm very, very impressed with what it can do. And if you want to know more about using ChatGPT or AI, go check out this video where I talk about the epic ChatGPT prompts for research and science. Go check it out because it's an awesome watch. I'll see you over there.

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Study: EV charging stations boost spending at nearby businesses

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Charging stations for electric vehicles are essential for cleaning up the transportation sector. A new study by MIT researchers suggests they’re good for business, too.

The study found that, in California, opening a charging station boosted annual spending at each nearby business by an average of about $1,500 in 2019 and about $400 between January 2021 and June 2023. The spending bump amounts to thousands of extra dollars annually for nearby businesses, with the increase particularly pronounced for businesses in underresourced areas.

The study’s authors hope the research paints a more holistic picture of the benefits of EV charging stations, beyond environmental factors.

“These increases are equal to a significant chunk of the cost of installing an EV charger, and I hope this study sheds light on these economic benefits,” says lead author Yunhan Zheng MCP ’21, SM ’21, PhD ’24, a postdoc at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART). “The findings could also diversify the income stream for charger providers and site hosts, and lead to more informed business models for EV charging stations.”

Zheng’s co-authors on the paper, which was published today in Nature Communications , are David Keith, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management; Jinhua Zhao, an MIT professor of cities and transportation; and alumni Shenhao Wang MCP ’17, SM ’17, PhD ’20 and Mi Diao MCP ’06, PhD ’10.

Understanding the EV effect

Increasing the number of electric vehicle charging stations is seen as a key prerequisite for the transition to a cleaner, electrified transportation sector. As such, the 2021 U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act committed $7.5 billion to build a national network of public electric vehicle chargers across the U.S.

But a large amount of private investment will also be needed to make charging stations ubiquitous.

“The U.S. is investing a lot in EV chargers and really encouraging EV adoption, but many EV charging providers can’t make enough money at this stage, and getting to profitability is a major challenge,” Zheng says.

EV advocates have long argued that the presence of charging stations brings economic benefits to surrounding communities, but Zheng says previous studies on their impact relied on surveys or were small-scale. Her team of collaborators wanted to make advocates’ claims more empirical.

For their study, the researchers collected data from over 4,000 charging stations in California and 140,000 businesses, relying on anonymized credit and debit card transactions to measure changes in consumer spending. The researchers used data from 2019 through June of 2023, skipping the year 2020 to minimize the impact of the pandemic.

To judge whether charging stations caused customer spending increases, the researchers compared data from businesses within 500 meters of new charging stations before and after their installation. They also analyzed transactions from similar businesses in the same time frame that weren’t near charging stations.

Supercharging nearby businesses

The researchers found that installing a charging station boosted annual spending at nearby establishments by an average of 1.4 percent in 2019 and 0.8 percent from January 2021 to June 2023.

While that might sound like a small amount per business, it amounts to thousands of dollars in overall consumer spending increases. Specifically, those percentages translate to almost $23,000 in cumulative spending increases in 2019 and about $3,400 per year from 2021 through June 2023.

Zheng says the decline in spending increases over the two time periods might be due to a saturation of EV chargers, leading to lower utilization, as well as an overall decrease in spending per business after the Covid-19 pandemic and a reduced number of businesses served by each EV charging station in the second period. Despite this decline, the annual impact of a charging station on all its surrounding businesses would still cover approximately 11.2 percent of the average infrastructure and installation cost of a standard charging station.

Through both time frames, the spending increases were highest for businesses within about a football field’s distance from the new stations. They were also significant for businesses in disadvantaged and low-income areas, as designated by California and the Justice40 Initiative.

“The positive impacts of EV charging stations on businesses are not constrained solely to some high-income neighborhoods,” Wang says. “It highlights the importance for policymakers to develop EV charging stations in marginalized areas, because they not only foster a cleaner environment, but also serve as a catalyst for enhancing economic vitality.”

Zheng believes the findings hold a lesson for charging station developers seeking to improve the profitability of their projects.

“The joint gas station and convenience store business model could also be adopted to EV charging stations,” Zheng says. “Traditionally, many gas stations are affiliated with retail store chains, which enables owners to both sell fuel and attract customers to diversify their revenue stream. EV charging providers could consider a similar approach to internalize the positive impact of EV charging stations.”

Zheng also says the findings could support the creation of new funding models for charging stations, such as multiple businesses sharing the costs of construction so they can all benefit from the added spending.

Those changes could accelerate the creation of charging networks, but Zheng cautions that further research is needed to understand how much the study’s findings can be extrapolated to other areas. She encourages other researchers to study the economic effects of charging stations and hopes future research includes states beyond California and even other countries.

“A huge number of studies have focused on retail sales effects from traditional transportation infrastructure, such as rail and subway stations, bus stops, and street configurations,” Zhao says. “This research provides evidence for an important, emerging piece of transportation infrastructure and shows a consistently positive effect on local businesses, paving the way for future research in this area.”

The research was supported, in part, by the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) and the Singapore National Research Foundation. Diao was partially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China.

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