What is it about?
This study evaluates the bibliographic and full-text coverage of 15 resources that scholars and students use to discover and access the scholarly literature. It compares the coverage of conventional library databases such as Scopus and PubMed with that of free, alternative discovery/access mechanisms such as Google Scholar, OpenAlex, ResearchGate, and Sci-Hub. Notably, many alternative discovery/access mechanisms offer more complete bibliographic and full-text coverage than the conventional databases. Researchers and students should weigh the high-quality interfaces and search capabilities of conventional databases against the superior coverage of the foremost alternative discovery/access mechanisms. Information professionals may want to reconsider the resources they acquire, present, and recommend to users, and database developers may benefit by adopting the best practices of their competitors.
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This page is a summary of: Comparing conventional and alternative mechanisms of discovering and accessing the scientific literature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2503051122.
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