HighBeam Research was a paid search engine and full text online archive owned by Gale, a subsidiary of Cengage, for thousands of newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines, and encyclopedias in English.

The company was established in August 2002 after Patrick Spain, who had just sold Hoover's, which he had co-founded, bought eLibrary and Encyclopedia.com from Tucows.

[3] Original investors included Prism Opportunity Fund of Chicago and 1 to 1 Ventures of Stamford, Connecticut.

Spain stated, "There was a glaring gap between free search like Google and high-end offerings like LexisNexis and Factiva.

In 2006, Oxford University Press, Knight Ridder and The Washington Post archives were added.