Elicit searches across over 138 million academic papers from Semantic Scholar, PubMed, and OpenAlex. This covers all academic disciplines.
How often are papers added?
Alerts: Daily updates from OpenAlex
Reports, Systematic Review, and Find Papers: Weekly updates from Semantic Scholar and PubMed
There may be a brief delay between a paper appearing in our source databases and being available in Elicit.
Our Data Sources
Elicit pulls papers from these major sources:
Semantic Scholar
200+ million publications across all fields
Direct partnerships with 50+ major publishers
OpenAlex
243 million publications from 260,000+ sources
About 2x broader coverage than Web of Science or Scopus
PubMed
33+ million citations
Focuses on biomedical literature, life sciences, and clinical medicine
You can opt to search for US clinical trials directly on clinicaltrials.gov by selecting the clinical trials corpus during search
Some of the resources in these databases overlap, and Elicit eliminates incomplete listings from its results, for a total of about 138 million papers from these sources.
What Publishers and Journals Does Elicit Cover?
Elicit covers major publishers across all academic fields:
Major Publishers: Springer Nature, Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, SAGE
University Presses: Oxford, Cambridge, MIT Press, Harvard, Princeton, Yale
Professional Societies: IEEE, ACM, American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, BMJ, Royal Society
Open Access Publishers: PLOS, Frontiers, MDPI, BioMed Central
Preprint Servers: arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, SSRN
Institutional Repositories: Harvard Dataverse, MIT DSpace, and university repositories worldwide
Government Sources: NIH, OSTI, NASA, European research repositories
Elicit includes all major high-impact journals like Nature, Science, NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA, Physical Review Letters, and IEEE Transactions.
How Does Elicit Compare to Other Databases?
Comprehensive Database Comparison
We used Elicit to look over 23 recent studies comparing multidisciplinary databases (OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, Dimensions) against traditional subscription databases (Web of Science, Scopus, EMBASE). Key findings:
OpenAlex retrieves up to 100% more records than Scopus
OpenAlex includes 27.9-29.3% more records than Web of Science
Better coverage of open access, non-English, and social sciences/humanities content
Superior representation of Global South publications and emerging fields
Biomedical Research Coverage
A peer-reviewed study from April 2025 compared how well different databases covered 1,249 papers from international clinical guidelines. OpenAlex (98.6% coverage, 0 high-quality papers missed) and Semantic Scholar (98.3%, 0 missed) outperformed EMBASE (96.8%, 7 missed) and PubMed (93.0%, 9 missed).
Disciplinary Coverage Patterns
Social Sciences & Humanities: OpenAlex demonstrates superior coverage with less geographic and linguistic bias than traditional databases
STEM Fields: Both multidisciplinary and traditional databases provide strong coverage, with OpenAlex covering more open access and preprint content
Health Sciences: OpenAlex achieved 98% coverage in diabetic screening systematic reviews, with high overlap with PubMed
How Elicit Compares to Specific Databases
EMBASE: OpenAlex outperformed EMBASE with 98.6% vs 96.8% coverage. For most biomedical research, Elicit's sources provide comprehensive coverage. EMBASE may add marginal value (less than 1%) for highly specialized pharmaceutical research.
Web of Science and Scopus: OpenAlex (243M papers) is substantially larger than Web of Science (71M) or Scopus (65M). OpenAlex also indexes 34,000+ open access journals compared to ~6,000 in Web of Science and ~7,000 in Scopus.
Subject-specific databases (CINAHL, PsycINFO, etc.): Elicit covers major journals from these fields through OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar. For highly specialized clinical or psychological research, supplementary searches may capture additional grey literature.
Clinical trials: Elicit can directly search ClinicalTrials.gov for detailed trial information.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Elicit include preprints?
Yes. Elicit includes preprints from arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, SSRN, and other discipline-specific preprint servers.
Is Elicit restricted to open access papers?
No. Elicit includes both open access and subscription-based papers. For full-text analysis, Elicit can access the complete paper if the paper is open access, or if you have the Elicit Browser Extension and a journal subscription. Without full-text access, Elicit uses the paper's title and abstract.
Does Elicit include books or dissertations?
No. Elicit focuses on peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, preprints, and working papers. It doesn't include books, dissertations, patents, or non-academic publications.
What about conference abstracts?
Elicit includes conference proceedings from major publishers (IEEE, ACM, etc.) through its sources.
Using Elicit for Systematic Reviews
How Much Coverage Do I Get?
Since Elicit combines OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, and PubMed, coverage is comprehensive for most systematic reviews. Important notes:
Grey literature and some clinical trial reports may have lower retrieval rates in automated searches
Regional coverage varies by database source (e.g., some gaps in Chinese publications)
For the most comprehensive reviews, consider supplementary searches in specialized databases for your field
How Do I Report My Search Strategy?
When describing your search in publications, you can say: "We searched Elicit, which provides access to over 250 million academic publications from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and PubMed. A 2025 systematic review of 23 comparative studies found that multidisciplinary databases like OpenAlex achieve broader coverage than traditional subscription databases, with OpenAlex retrieving up to 100% more records than Scopus and 27.9-29.3% more than Web of Science."
Citations to include:
Rajit et al. (2025). Assessing the coverage of PubMed, Embase, OpenAlex, and Semantic Scholar for automated single-database searches in living guideline evidence surveillance. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 183, 111789. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2025.111789
Thelwall, M., & Jiang, X. (2025). Is OpenAlex suitable for research quality evaluation and which citation indicator is best? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.
Fuente-Gutiérrez, E., & Kippes, R. (2025). Análisis de cobertura de referencia entre OpenAlex y Web of Science en artículos en coautoría Argentina-España (2013-2023). Revista Panamericana de Comunicación.
Elicit systematic review on database coverage comparisons: https://elicit.com/review/cf789d0a-3009-4123-95d1-35c362ff8b78
Additional Resources