Are there alternatives to google scholar and google patents?
Due to my line of work, I find myself having to use both these services frequently, despite avoiding google as much as I can. I see a lot of alternatives out there for internet searching, but when it comes to specific fields, alternatives tend to be scarce.
Thank you for the recommendation. I didn't know archive.org had this feature, and it seems to be focused on open databases, something that even scholar doesn't do. It will help me a lot.
I use JabRef for both finding research papers and generating bibliographies. It's phenomenal and fully open source. Definitely worth checking out, I'm not even sure what I'd do without it these days!
In the top left there should be a search option. In settings preferences, be sure it's set up to search all sources. I get tons of articles when putting in pretty specific topics.
Edit: It's in the preferences under the file tab. Here's screenshots of my home screen, plus the preferences I use for it to search papers.
Patents seems to be the hardest one to find alternatives. The thing with google patents is that it searches from multiple databases, from multiple countries, so we don't need to look for each source.
I used to litigate patents, and for international searches I have not found an adequate substitute. Depending on why you are searching, searching may be inadvisable anyway, at least in the U.S. if your search uncovers a specific patent (or even arguably should have uncovered a specific patent) and you are later sued by the rights holder for infringement, your actual knowledge of the patent can be used against you to show willful infringement, a damage multiplier. Apparently, companies that know about a patent need to hire competent legal counsel to analyze the patent with respect to their products and give them an opinion on possible infringement. That process can be quite expensive, so it is often better to not search in the first place. I wrote a few opinions over the years, but it was not a common activity. Accusations of willful infringement were pretty common in litigation though, probably about 40% of my cases.
Just writing this quick summary makes me glad I retired from practicing law.
Also, you are not my client, this is not legal advice, I might be a fraud, yadda yadda yadda.
I used to have access to scopus and web of science from my university, but I don't have anymore, so I ended up using scholar, but looking for alternatives.
Elicit looks interesting, but I see that it requires a login, and has a bit weird privacy policy. I will check it in more detail, thanks.