Elicit's source for papers

Elicit searches across over 250 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.

Elicit pulls papers from three major sources:

Semantic Scholar

• 200+ million publications across all fields

• Direct partnerships with 50+ major publishers

• Learn more about Semantic Scholar's coverage

OpenAlex

• 243 million publications from 260,000+ sources

• About 2x broader coverage than Web of Science or Scopus

• Learn more about OpenAlex's coverage

PubMed

• 33+ million citations

• Focuses on biomedical literature, life sciences, and clinical medicine

• Learn more about PubMed

ClinicalTrials.gov

• You can opt to search for US clinical trials directly on clinicaltrials.gov by selecting the clinical trials corpus during search

Elicit covers major publishers across all academic fields:

Elicit includes all major high-impact journals like Nature, Science, NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA, Physical Review Letters, and IEEE Transactions.

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). This report found that multidisciplinary databases consistently achieve broader coverage:

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

A peer-reviewed study from April 2025 compared how well different databases covered 1,249 papers from international clinical guidelines:

The study found that 90.5% of papers appeared in all four databases. OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar had better coverage and didn't miss any high-quality papers.

Recent comparative studies show that database performance varies by field:

• 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

EMBASE (for biomedical research)

OpenAlex outperformed EMBASE with 98.6% coverage versus 96.8%. OpenAlex didn't miss any high-quality papers, while EMBASE missed seven. EMBASE only had 8 unique papers (0.6%) that weren't in other databases.

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). Multiple 2025 studies confirm OpenAlex's superior coverage while maintaining comparable metadata quality:

• Argentina-Spain collaboration study: 27.9% more coverage than Web of Science, 29.3% more than Scopus

• Research Excellence Framework study: OpenAlex contained over 2x the articles indexed in Scopus

• Better coverage of international and non-English publications

OpenAlex also indexes 34,000+ open access journals compared to about 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 in these databases may capture additional grey literature or clinical trial data.

Clinical trials

Elicit can directly search ClinicalTrials.gov for detailed trial information. Our paper search also includes published trial information from sources like Cochrane CENTRAL as indexed by OpenAlex.

Yes. Elicit includes preprints from:

• arXiv (3+ million preprints in physics, computer science, and math)

• bioRxiv and medRxiv (biology and medicine)

• SSRN (social sciences)

• Other discipline-specific preprint servers

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

• You have the Elicit Browser Extension and a journal subscription

Without full-text access, Elicit uses the paper's title and abstract to perform your analysis.

No. Elicit focuses on academic papers and preprints:

• Peer-reviewed journal articles

• Conference proceedings

• Preprints

• Working papers

Elicit doesn't include books, dissertations, patents, or non-academic publications.

Elicit includes conference proceedings from major publishers (IEEE, ACM, etc.) through its sources. Some specialized conference abstract databases may have additional content not in Elicit.

Multiple 2025 studies have evaluated database coverage for systematic review applications:

Biomedical Research:

• PCOS guidelines: 98.6% coverage (OpenAlex), 98.3% (Semantic Scholar), 93.0% (PubMed)

• Diabetic eye screening: 98% coverage (OpenAlex)

• Combined coverage: 90.5% of papers appeared in all tested databases

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

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 (Thelwall & Jiang, 2025; Fuente-Gutiérrez & Kippes, 2025). In biomedical research specifically, OpenAlex demonstrated 98.6% coverage of guideline-cited papers without missing any high-quality papers, outperforming EMBASE (96.8%) and PubMed (93.0%) (Rajit et al., 2025).

Citations to include:

• Rajit, D., McDonald, S., Tay, C. T., Du, L., Enticott, J., & Teede, H. (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

• Semantic Scholar Publishers & Coverage

• OpenAlex Coverage Documentation

• OpenAlex Technical Documentation

• PubMed Overview

• Systematic Review: Database Coverage Comparisons