How often do you Google information? One of the best search engines in the world is indispensable in our daily lives, especially for university students who are full of course readings and assignments. A few keywords in the search bar — and voilà — the results link you to endless facts and suggestions on a particular topic.

Google may win the popular vote, but it is far from the only resource on the internet for aspiring scholars. How you find resources for assignments is as important as the information you get. For that, there’s no better way to dive into your topic than through search engines optimized for academic research — it’s part of building your critical thinking skills while sharpening your analytical eyes of truth to spot fake news.

If you’re ready to up your search game, be sure to bookmark this list for future reference:

Best search engines to use in academia

WorldCat.org

If you are familiar with Google Scholar or JSTOR, you may have come across this great website through your university library. WorldCat.org prides itself on being the largest network of library content and services in the world.

You can use WorldCat.org through your student library account to unlock an endless wealth of knowledge. It works by directing you to the collections of more than 10,000 libraries around the world, including the prestigious Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford and The Library of Congress.

WorldCat.org gives you access to a variety of formats in its catalog, such as old VHS tapes and downloadable music scores — all of which are key resources that greatly enhance the quality of your research.

Semantic Scholar

Need a more accurate and analytical way to interpret your resources? Semantic Scholar is your answer.

Powered by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI), this free search engine uses sophisticated AI and machine learning techniques to augment its discovery tools. It has a function that captures meaning and connects the dots between papers, so it’s handy for data interpretation.

You can also say goodbye to the confusion of navigating advanced search tools and wordy text on the screen. Visually, it is one of the best academic search engines with a user-friendly interface that uses a simple yet colorful design. Easy-to-follow tutorials are a plus to help you maximize your website search.

Ecosia

Want to plant a tree on every quest? Ecosia’s unique philosophy landed it on our list of the best search engines: it is a social enterprise founded on the principle that everyone can fight climate change, even with a click.

Ecosia channels the ad revenue it generates to support reforestation projects aimed at neutralizing carbon dioxide emissions. According to the website, it has planted more than 154 million trees worldwide, from Mount Bamboutos in Cameroon to restoring Indonesia’s forests to former oil plantations.

Apart from its green initiatives, Ecosia is perfect for students as it can be added as extensions to default browsers, with an app version for your mobile devices. Environmental sciences students can rejoice: its blog regularly updates the latest scoop on the eco world, so you’re always up to date on the latest news on climate action.

Open Knowledge Maps

Scientific journals don’t have to be dry and dull, and the developers of this search engine fully understand the power of visual learning. Instead of getting results in lines of text, it gives you a map with an overview of the 100 most relevant documents related to your search query. The algorithm then groups them into circles based on the number of common words they have.

It is one of the best search engines reviewed by researchers from prestigious schools such as ETH Zurich and Harvard University. The best part? There’s an automatic citation generator for every document you click, saving you time when your references are formatted correctly.

Coordinating REpositories (CORE)

CORE is a not-for-profit service that aims to be the world’s largest aggregator of open-access journals and peer-reviewed papers on the web. It has over 200 million scholarly articles gathered from 11,000 data providers, connecting you to numerous research repositories from universities around the world.

If you’re tired of pesky paywalls blocking access to the papers you need, you can add CORE Discovery extension to either Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera for free. This handy feature looks for an accessible copy elsewhere, so you don’t have to scramble for it yourself.