Elicit's source for papers | Elicit Help Center

Elicit's source for papers

Elicit searches across over 138 million academic papers from Semantic Scholar, PubMed, and OpenAlex. This covers all academic disciplines.

How often are papers added?

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

OpenAlex

PubMed

ClinicalTrials.gov

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:

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:

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

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, 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:

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: