This article compiles a list of 5 free search engines for thesis and dissertation. Each of these search engines is powered by wide arrays of databases from various sources including open-access documents. With these search engines, you can research your topics and gather resources necessary for the thesis.
Thesis writing is not so easy and having all the research data and finding resources to prove your claim is difficult especially when you don’t have any place to start. A regular search engine like Google, Bing, etc. might help you with that but they won’t be as efficient as these search engines. They are specifically designed to help you research academic topics and gather resources. With that said, let’s check them out one by one.
Also read: Online Scientific Writing Editor with Reference Manager
5 Free Search Engines for Thesis:
Microsoft Academic
Microsoft Academic is a free search engine by Microsoft for academic queries. It has a wide database of millions of journals, research papers, scientific work, institutions, conferences, and more. The homepage of this search engine provides you a well-structured interface designed to easily find information despite what type of input you have. You can find content based on topics, authors, institutions, branches, date, and more. And when you get to the topic, it recommends links to its parent and child topics to give you an overall immersive view into the topic.
Being a search engine, it has a search tool where you can input your query and get results. You can then use search filters like author, date, topic, citation, etc. to further narrow down the results. Each result shows you the name of the topic, authors, publication info, citations, etc. to help you identify the topics that are more relevant to you. And, in case of open-access documents, it lets you download the information along with an option to copy the citation in one-click.
Give this scholarly search engine a try for thesis writing here.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is like an academic version of Google Search. It has almost all the same features as regular Google Search and might seem familiar and easy to navigate. Microsoft Academic is good for research and Google Scholar is good for finding resources. You can simply run a search query for the resources and it returns with resources which you can sort by date and content type.
Along with the name and brief description, each result mentioned what type of document(s) is contained and from which source. It also shows you how many people cited the document along with links to related articles. From here, you can add a search result to your library and create a collection of topics that you need for a thesis. Then, you can simply visit your Google Scholar library to have all the info at once place while working on the thesis.
Use Google Scholar for thesis writing here.
World Wide Science
If you are writing a thesis on any science topic then World Wide Science is a nice search engine to consider. This search engine is the global science gateway where you can get resources on all old and new discoveries, experiments, theories, hypothesis, ongoing research, and more. It is comprised of international scientific databases and portal where you can get all sorts of information along with resources.
Since this search engine has resources from all around the world, it features a translator that translates the resources to your preferred language. To look for a topic, you can either browse categories manually or use the search tool to run your query. Then you can filter the results by papers, data, multiple media, open-access, data range, preferred data, etc. to find what you seek.
Get help with your thesis with World Wide Science here.
ERIC
ERIC is another resource-rich search engine that would be perfect for thesis and dissertation. With this search engine, you can not only search for resources but thesaurus as well. You can find resources to support your work and then use the thesaurus to get some help writing it down.
Finding resources is simple here, you can either use the search tool or manually browse through the collection sorted by publication date, description, sources, topics, and so on. Each search results shows you a brief info about it covering a description along with what’s inside. In the case of open-access documents, it also provides you a direct link to the document from where you can download it.
Give this academic search engine for thesis a try here.
Research Gate
As the name suggests, Research Gate is another search engine which is good for academic research. This search engine has a database of over 118 million published work by more than 15 million researchers all around the world.
When you run your search query on this search engines, it sorts the results in four sections; publications, data, authors, and questions. Depending on your requirements, you can get respective results and gather information and resources for your thesis. For open-access documents, you would be able to download full-text PDFs along with an option to copy the citation in 1-click for references. And, if you can’t find anything relevant, or have a question, you can post it on Research Gate community to seek answers from other users around the world.
Try ResearchGate for thesis writing here.
Closing Words:
These are the 5 free search engines for thesis. All these search engines cover a vast array of databases where you can gather information and resources for your thesis and dissertation.
