The SAT Question Everyone Got Wrong - Veritaseum

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More Research Links - A Mirror (Credit @s-n-arly on tumblr)

In my previous post on options for research beyond Google, there were a good number of compiled links from a post by Edward Clark. I'll admit I don't know who that is, but I thought the link looked pretty good. Since my previous post has an embed link for tumblr, if the post is deleted or lost the links will also be lost. So I'm going to blockquote some of them here.

• refseek - Academic Search Engine - More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
• WorldCat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
• SpringerLink - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
• Bioline International is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
• RePEc: Research Papers in Economics - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
• Science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
• PDF Drive is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
• BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine): Basic Search is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.

There was an update post with more search databases and other useful sites. The important point to research is to do the deep work of using many sources that are free from bias.

• Qwant - Search engine with no tracking or advertising
• Ecosia - Search engine that plants trees – has ads and that ad revenue runs the engine while funding tree planting

Academic/Reseach

• Academia - platform that shares academic research
• arXiv - (pronounced archive, apparently) is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for 2,328,899 scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. It is housed by Cornell University
• Astrophysics Data System - The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a digital library portal for researchers in astronomy and physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS maintains three bibliographic collections containing more than 15 million records covering publications in astronomy and astrophysics, physics, and general science.
• REPEAT: BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine): Basic Search BASE is a search engine specifically for academic studies texts, and contains more than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.
• REPEAT: Bioline - This is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
• Education Resources Information Center - ERIC is a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable, internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information.
• JSTOR - academic digital library providing access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
• PubMed - the National Institute for Health's National Library of Medicine, comprises more than 35 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
• Research Gate - founded to address the problems in the way science is created and shared. Connects the world of science and makes research open to all.
• REPEAT: Research Papers in Economics - Volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science for RePEc.
• Sci-Hub - research publication library – technically pirated content, but please note that the researchers do not get paid for publication, and will often send you a PDF of their research for free if you ask, it's the publications that want to restrict access to paying readers
• REPEAT: US Government Science Portal - Science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
• REPEAT: World Cat - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where the rare book you need is.

Libraries

• Boston Library History & Political Science - The Boston Library has a ton of history and poli sci resources. Big libraries often have things available digitally for free, even if you aren't in the area.
• Hathi Trust Digital Library – This library provides free digitized books from all over the world.
• Internet Archive - This non-profit library houses millions of free digital books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
• PDF Drive - This is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format, claiming over 225 million names. Caution advised as some users report malware may be hidden in with the valid content.
• Project Gutenberg - This site provides free downloads of digital books, focusing on works with expired US copyright. Note, if you look for out-of-print books on Google, it will try to sell you books that you can actually download free from Gutenberg (I've tested this multiple times).
• Z Library – This digital library provides ebooks for free. ... ... Whoa. This is serious. This domain has been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Understand this. Information wants to be free.

Doing Research? Skip Google (Credit @s-n-arly on tumblr)

Google used to be better. Really.

Years ago, Google's standard search feature always gave the best possible results no matter what you were searching for. And it was a great tool for researchers, teachers and students. There was even a focused sub-domain specifically for research and scholarly pursuits; Google Scholar.

But the years have not been kind. Google is the most popular search engine by far, but as the tool has grown it has become such a strong target for commercialization, advertising, scammers and spammers. At one point, they were very good at deprioritizing these listings, but more recently results are worse. And it is not just me that has been saying it.

• BusinessInsider.com - Google Is Getting Worse As It Loses Fight Against Search Engine Spam
• MarketVantage.com - Google Search Is Getting Worse
• SearchEngineJournal.com - Ex-Googler Answers Why Google Search is Getting Worse

This trend was top-of-mind again recently when I tumbled upon the following post and thread on tumblr. I share it here in near entirety as I feel like it shares a lot of good alternative resources, specifically for researchers.

https://s-n-arly.tumblr.com/post/697929770215899136/skip-google-for-research

Now, in Google's defense, they have always maintained the Scholar sub-domain as the best alternative for actually scholarly research. Whether this separate site still has good results in recent days is something I have not tested, but it's worth keeping if needed.