# 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?**

- **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
- [Learn more about Semantic Scholar's coverage](https://www.semanticscholar.org/about/publishers)

**OpenAlex**

- 243 million publications from 260,000+ sources
- About 2x broader coverage than Web of Science or Scopus
- [Learn more about OpenAlex's coverage](https://help.openalex.org/hc/en-us/articles/27190301279127-What-content-does-OpenAlex-include-and-how-does-it-compare-to-other-databases)

**PubMed**

- 33+ million citations
- Focuses on biomedical literature, life sciences, and clinical medicine
- [Learn more about PubMed](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/about/)

**[ClinicalTrials.gov](https://clinicaltrials.gov/)**

- You can opt to search for US clinical trials directly on [clinicaltrials.gov](https://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](/content/review/cf789d0a-3009-4123-95d1-35c362ff8b78/index.html) 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](https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(25)00122-2/fulltext) 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](https://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](https://support.elicit.com/en/articles/14759113) 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:

- 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](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](/content/review/cf789d0a-3009-4123-95d1-35c362ff8b78/index.html)