PubMed vs Google Scholar vs OpenAlex — which should you use?
Three free tools cover most of what researchers and students need to find papers. Each is good at something different.
At a glance
| PubMed | Google Scholar | OpenAlex | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Run by | US National Library of Medicine | OurResearch (a non-profit) | |
| Covers | Medicine, health and life sciences | Almost every field, plus books, theses and grey literature | All fields: papers, authors, institutions, journals, topics |
| Best for | Careful medical and biology searches | Quick searches and finding free PDFs | Data, statistics and analysis of research |
| Advanced search | Excellent (MeSH subject terms, filters) | Basic | Powerful filters and a free API |
| Citation counts | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Free data download | Yes | No | Yes, fully open (CC0) |
PubMed
PubMed is the standard database for medicine and the life sciences. Its records are checked and tagged with MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), a controlled vocabulary that makes searches precise: searching the MeSH term for heart attack also finds papers that say "myocardial infarction".
Use it for: clinical questions, systematic reviews, anything in health and biology. Tick "Free full text" to see papers you can read.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is the easiest place to start. It searches across fields and often finds free copies of papers on university sites ("All versions" link).
Watch out: its coverage includes non-peer-reviewed material, and you cannot see exactly which sources it indexes. It is great for finding, less good for systematic or reproducible searches.
OpenAlex
OpenAlex is a free and fully open catalogue of the world's research, linking papers to their authors, institutions, countries, journals and topics. Anyone can download or query the data.
Use it for: counting and comparing research — by country, university or field — and building tools. ResearchBoard is built on OpenAlex (plus PubMed counts): every number on our dashboard comes from it.
Which one should you use?
- Writing a medical or biology paper? Search PubMed first, then Google Scholar to catch anything missed.
- Looking for a quick answer or a free PDF? Google Scholar.
- Comparing countries, universities or fields? OpenAlex — or simply use ResearchBoard, which does it for you every day.