Scout — multi-source literature search
Enter a research topic — get real papers from ten live scholarly databases at once, never AI-invented.
What Scout does
Type a topic or keywords (one search — combine terms with semicolons), click Find sources, and get a ranked list of real papers to review, cite, or save.
- Searches ten live databases in parallel — Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, CrossRef, arXiv, Europe PMC, DBLP, DOAJ, HAL, IETF and CORE — and merges the results.
- De-duplicates the same paper found across sources, and shows exactly which databases returned each result.
- Every result is a real record from those databases — Scout never invents references.
- Fast by default; verify any result's DOI against CrossRef on demand with a per-result Verify button.
- Copy a BibTeX entry for any paper, or save papers to your Library.
No account needed to search — Scout is free. Sign in only to save papers to your Library.
Try Scout →Why this matters
Literature search usually means running the same query across half a dozen database websites and hand-merging the results. Scout queries ten live scholarly databases at once — Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv, Europe PMC, DBLP, DOAJ, HAL, IETF and CORE — deduplicates records that share a DOI, and ranks what's left. Every result is a real record returned by one of those sources; nothing is generated by a language model, so you never get a plausible-looking reference that doesn't exist.
Examples
Search a topic
Query: CRISPR → ranked real papers, each with title, authors, year, venue, citation count and DOI, plus a relevance score and a “confirmed by N databases” badge when the same DOI came back from several sources. A one-click .bib export is built from the page you see.
FAQ
Does Scout invent or summarise papers with AI?
No. Every result is a real record returned by one of the ten databases. No part of the result list is model-generated.
Do I need an account?
No — Scout is free, no sign-up needed. Daily limits apply for fair use.
Why does a paper show “confirmed by N databases”?
That record was returned independently by three of the databases — matched by DOI, or by an exact title match when a source carries no DOI — a strong signal the metadata is correct. It is not a quality score.
Are the citation counts exact?
They are whatever the source reported and can differ slightly between databases; treat them as indicative, not authoritative.
Related
Found sources worth keeping? Save them to your Library to tag and export later. Writing the draft first instead? Cite works claim-first — paste your text and it finds sources for each statement.
More RefScout tools
BibCheck
Find duplicate keys, broken cite keys, and orphans in your .bib.
Cite
Paste text, get real sources for each claim, export a .bib.
PreSubmit
Venue-compliance & submission-readiness check before you submit.
Glossary
Detect LaTeX abbreviations; generate \newacronym + \gls{} output.
DiffChecker
Compare two LaTeX versions side-by-side and see what changed.
Library
Save, tag, browse, and export your papers. Free account required.