MuchSearchOne input, every siteBroadest scholarly index
The broadest cross-discipline index, with citation counts that make it easy to find the canonical paper. Relevance is opaque and bulk export is awkward, so use it for the first sweep.
MuchSearch · Academic
Academic Search — Google Scholar, arXiv, PubMed
Search Google Scholar, arXiv, PubMed, Semantic Scholar, CORE and WorldCat to cover four literature indexes at once.
8 search sourcesType once, search manyFree, no sign-up
Multi-search
Type once, pick a source
Switch sources to compare results without retyping your query.
Use legal, healthy keywords. MuchSearch passes your query to the destination site; results and content live there.
All sources
Academic sources
Open a source directly, or type keywords and search it right here.
AI-powered research with TLDRs
Adds citation context and short TLDRs to each paper, which helps you decide whether a result matters before opening the PDF. Smaller than Scholar for older material.
Preprints: physics, math, CS, AI
Immediate access to preprints in CS, physics and maths, including version history. Not peer-reviewed — check whether a published version exists before citing.
36M+ biomedical citations
Curated biomedical indexing with MeSH terms, which is far more precise than free-text search. The controlled vocabulary is the whole advantage; learn to use it.
Largest open-access aggregator
Aggregates open-access papers from institutional repositories, useful for full text that publishers hide. Coverage overlaps Scholar but the full-text access is better.
10,000+ library catalogs
Library holdings across thousands of catalogues, including books and archival material no journal index covers. Use it when the source is a monograph.
Borrow 20M+ free books
Borrowable scans of millions of books, with a usable search by subject and year. Best for older texts that are out of print but not out of copyright.
Open research repository: papers, data, software
A repository for datasets, software and preprints with citable DOIs. Search here when the evidence you need is data rather than a paper.
About the Academic channel
A literature search fails quietly. You query one database, screen two hundred hits, and later discover that the key paper was indexed somewhere else under a different term. Coverage differs enough between Scholar, arXiv, PubMed and Semantic Scholar that one search is never enough — and running four in parallel takes the same time as running one properly.
Build one boolean string with synonyms, then run it across the databases that matter for your field. Screen titles and abstracts before opening any PDF, deduplicate by DOI in a reference manager, and snowball once in each direction from your three most central papers. Keep a plain-text log of the queries and dates you ran — reviewers ask, and future-you will not remember.
Academic search — frequently asked questions
Why search four academic databases instead of just Scholar?
Coverage differs by field and format. arXiv is the primary source for preprints, PubMed is curated for biomedicine, Semantic Scholar adds citation context, and Scholar is the broadest cross-discipline sweep. One database is one blind spot.
How do I avoid duplicates across databases?
Export each result set as RIS or BibTeX into Zotero, EndNote or Paperpile and let it merge by DOI. Records without DOIs need a manual title check — export titles, sort, compare.
Should I search arXiv before or after the discipline database?
Do the systematic search in the curated database first, then use arXiv to catch work too new to be indexed. Starting with arXiv biases a review toward fast-moving CS.
How do I keep track of what I searched?
One plain-text file: date, database, exact query string, hit count. It takes thirty seconds per query and answers the “why did you exclude this branch” question months later.