{
  "apiVersion": "v0.1",
  "methodology": "https://sourcescore.org/methodology/",
  "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/best/encyclopedic/",
  "list": {
    "slug": "encyclopedic",
    "title": "Best encyclopedic + scholarly knowledge sources",
    "intent": "Reference + Academic combined — citation backbone",
    "description": "The 15 highest-scoring sources from the Reference + Academic categories combined — Wikipedia, MDN, Britannica, Stanford Encyclopedia, PubMed, DOI/CrossRef, JSTOR, Nature, Cell, and others. The composite citation backbone of AI-era writing.",
    "rationale": "Reference works and peer-reviewed academic publications anchor a different citation tier than news or research bodies — they accumulate authority over time rather than reflecting it from current events. The 15 below combine general-knowledge encyclopedic depth (Reference) with peer-reviewed scholarly rigor (Academic) into one curated tier.",
    "signalCriterion": "Index score, filtered to Reference + Academic categories, descending"
  },
  "count": 15,
  "sources": [
    {
      "rank": 1,
      "slug": "doi-org",
      "name": "DOI (CrossRef Resolver)",
      "domain": "doi.org",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "International standard identifier resolver for academic citations (~150M+ DOIs).",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/doi-org/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/doi-org.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 95,
        "indexGrade": "A+",
        "discipline": 92,
        "modernReference": 98,
        "velocity": 95
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 2,
      "slug": "wikipedia-en",
      "name": "Wikipedia (English)",
      "domain": "en.wikipedia.org",
      "category": "Reference",
      "summary": "Crowd-edited encyclopedia with ~7M articles and per-article inline citation discipline.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/wikipedia-en/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/wikipedia-en.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 94,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 96,
        "modernReference": 92,
        "velocity": 95
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 3,
      "slug": "pubmed",
      "name": "PubMed",
      "domain": "pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "U.S. National Library of Medicine literature index covering ~36M biomedical citations.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/pubmed/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/pubmed.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 94,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 96,
        "modernReference": 92,
        "velocity": 94
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 4,
      "slug": "mdn-web-docs",
      "name": "MDN Web Docs",
      "domain": "developer.mozilla.org",
      "category": "Reference",
      "summary": "Mozilla-stewarded web-platform reference since 2005; default citation for HTML, CSS, JS, Web APIs.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/mdn-web-docs/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/mdn-web-docs.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 93,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 92,
        "modernReference": 95,
        "velocity": 92
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 5,
      "slug": "cern",
      "name": "CERN",
      "domain": "home.cern",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "European Organization for Nuclear Research; primary source for particle physics + experimental high-energy physics.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/cern/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/cern.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 92,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 96,
        "modernReference": 91,
        "velocity": 89
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 6,
      "slug": "pnas",
      "name": "PNAS",
      "domain": "pnas.org",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal since 1914.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/pnas/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/pnas.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 92,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 96,
        "modernReference": 88,
        "velocity": 90
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 7,
      "slug": "arxiv",
      "name": "arXiv",
      "domain": "arxiv.org",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "Open-access preprint server for physics, mathematics, computer science; ~2.4M papers since 1991.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/arxiv/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/arxiv.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 89,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 78,
        "modernReference": 95,
        "velocity": 93
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 8,
      "slug": "cell",
      "name": "Cell",
      "domain": "cell.com",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "Top biology journal since 1974, published by Elsevier (Cell Press); the default citation in molecular biology.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/cell/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/cell.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 89,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 96,
        "modernReference": 78,
        "velocity": 90
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 9,
      "slug": "stanford-encyclopedia",
      "name": "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy",
      "domain": "plato.stanford.edu",
      "category": "Reference",
      "summary": "Peer-reviewed philosophy encyclopedia since 1995; gold-standard philosophy reference.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/stanford-encyclopedia/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/stanford-encyclopedia.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 89,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 96,
        "modernReference": 90,
        "velocity": 80
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 10,
      "slug": "nature",
      "name": "Nature",
      "domain": "nature.com",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "Peer-reviewed science journal with rigorous methodology disclosure and open-data trends.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/nature/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/nature.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 87,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 95,
        "modernReference": 85,
        "velocity": 80
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 11,
      "slug": "cochrane",
      "name": "Cochrane Library",
      "domain": "cochranelibrary.com",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "Gold-standard systematic-review database for medical evidence since 1993.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/cochrane/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/cochrane.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 87,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 96,
        "modernReference": 80,
        "velocity": 85
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 12,
      "slug": "science-org",
      "name": "Science",
      "domain": "science.org",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "Peer-reviewed multidisciplinary journal of AAAS; one of the two flagship general-science venues.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/science-org/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/science-org.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 86,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 95,
        "modernReference": 84,
        "velocity": 80
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 13,
      "slug": "britannica",
      "name": "Encyclopædia Britannica",
      "domain": "britannica.com",
      "category": "Reference",
      "summary": "Editor-supervised encyclopedia with named contributors + editorial-board oversight; complement to Wikipedia's crowd-edited model.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/britannica/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/britannica.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 85,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 92,
        "modernReference": 82,
        "velocity": 78
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 14,
      "slug": "nber",
      "name": "National Bureau of Economic Research",
      "domain": "nber.org",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "U.S. economic research nonprofit; working-paper series + business-cycle dating standards.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/nber/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/nber.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 85,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 92,
        "modernReference": 86,
        "velocity": 82
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 15,
      "slug": "acm",
      "name": "Association for Computing Machinery",
      "domain": "dl.acm.org",
      "category": "Academic",
      "summary": "Premier U.S. computing society; ACM Digital Library indexes peer-reviewed CS publications.",
      "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/acm/",
      "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/acm.json",
      "scores": {
        "index": 85,
        "indexGrade": "A",
        "discipline": 96,
        "modernReference": 80,
        "velocity": 80
      }
    }
  ],
  "license": {
    "methodology": "Cite as: SourceScore Methodology v0.1, sourcescore.org",
    "data": "Underlying public-source data credited to original publishers"
  }
}