Google Scholar
Free search across scholarly articles, theses, books and court opinions, with "cited by" counts and links to full text where available.
- Free plan or free tier
- Shows sources for its answers
About Semantic Scholar
Free academic search engine from the Allen Institute for AI, with one-line paper summaries, citation context and a public API.
Semantic Scholar is a free search engine for scientific literature run by the Allen Institute for AI, a nonprofit research institute. Paper pages show the abstract, a short machine-generated summary called a TLDR for many papers, the references, and the papers that cite it, with snippets showing how later work cites it.
It is widely used for quick screening of results, following citation trails and building alerts on authors or topics. The research feeds suggest new papers based on the papers you save. Its public API and datasets are used by researchers who build their own tools for literature analysis.
Coverage is strongest in computer science, biomedicine and related fields, so check a discipline-specific index as well if you work elsewhere. Treat the short summaries as a guide to whether a paper is worth opening, and read the paper itself before you cite a claim from it.
Details
Free plan or free tier
YesDeveloper API
YesShows sources for its answers
Yes
Not enough info yet on open source, works in Word or Google Docs, mobile app. Check the tool's own site.
Listing written by ResearchBest, checked 2026-11-03. Report a correction or request removal. Back to paper search and indexes.