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Research Finder

Type a topic or title. Search papers, journals, clinical trials, preprints and PDFs across many databases, or generate a script that pulls results and downloads open-access PDFs.

❓ How does this work? (tap to open)

What is this?

It's a search tool just for serious research: science papers, medical studies, clinical trials and PDFs. Regular Google is full of ads and blog posts. This page sends your search straight to the places where researchers actually publish, so you skip the junk.

How to use it

  1. Type what you're looking for in the big box, like "sleep and memory in teenagers".
  2. Optional: add a year range to only get newer papers, or tick "PDF only" to focus on downloadable files.
  3. Databases tab: tap any card. It opens that site's results for your search in a new tab. Try a few, because each one has different papers.
  4. PDF search tab: makes a special search that finds PDF files (or Word, Excel, and more). You can limit it to one site like nih.gov. Tap Google to run it.
  5. Python fetch tab: for grabbing lots of results at once. It makes a small program that collects results into a spreadsheet and downloads the free PDFs for you.

Words you'll see

  • Open access: free to read and download.
  • Preprint: a paper shared before experts have checked it.
  • Clinical trial: a test of a treatment on real people.
  • DOI: a permanent ID number for a paper, like a license plate.

Tip

Some papers are locked behind a paywall. If you only see a summary, search the title again with "PDF only" ticked, or try PubMed Central, CORE or Europe PMC, which focus on free copies.

Build a search-engine query

Script that fetches results and PDFs

Hosted pages can't pull live data from other sites, so this builds a script you run yourself (pip install requests). It saves a CSV and downloads every open-access PDF it finds.

▶ Where and how do I run this? (tap to open)

A script is a list of instructions for a computer. You need a place that can run Python. The easiest free place, even on a phone, is Google Colab. It runs in your browser and there's nothing to install.

Easy way: Google Colab

  1. Type your search at the top of this page and pick your options.
  2. Tap Copy script below.
  3. Tap Open Google Colab below and sign in with a Google account. On iPhone, if it looks cramped, use Safari's "Request Desktop Website".
  4. You'll see an empty box with a ▶ play button. Tap in the box and paste.
  5. Tap the ▶ play button and wait a minute or two. When it's done it prints "results saved".
  6. A file called results.zip downloads by itself. Inside is results.csv (the list) and a pdfs folder. If nothing downloads, tap the folder icon on the left side of Colab and download it from there.

On a computer instead

  1. Install Python from python.org, then run pip install requests in Terminal (Mac) or Command Prompt (Windows).
  2. Paste the script into a text file named search.py.
  3. Run python search.py. A results folder appears next to the file.

Good to know

Only free, open-access PDFs get downloaded. Locked papers still show up in the list with a link. If one source fails, the script skips it and keeps going.



Open Google Colab