Washington and Lee University Research Guides: Physics & Engineering Subject Guide: Find Articles

Mary Abdoney

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Subjects: Biology, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Cognitive & Behavioral Sciences, Computer Science, Earth and Environmental Geoscience, Environmental Studies, Film Studies, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics and Engineering, Science (General), Theater, Dance, and Film Studies, Writing Program

Recommended Databases

PROLA - Physical Review Online Archive This link opens in a new window
The American Physical Society's PROLA archive contains PDF images of all pages of Physical Review 1893-2007 and Reviews of Modern Physics 1929-present, and thus extends W&L's holdings, makes the whole collection searchable, and delivers the results to individual desktops. This online resource should be much more useable than the bound volumes.
Important: the SEARCH interface requires the user to specify the journal(s) within which a search is to be done, and searches are NOT conducted on the full text of articles. You can choose fields to search, and make Boolean combinations.
The ABSTRACT field is a good candidate for the equivalent of a keyword search, and probably the best place to begin. A search for a phrase in the ABSTRACT field can be done by enclosing it in quotes (thus, "structure and stability of metallic glasses" retrieves ONE article in Phys Rev B.; without the quotes, the terms are combined and 11 articles are retrieved).
A 'FULL RECORD' search includes AUTHOR, ABSTRACT, TITLE, COLLABORATION and AFFILIATION fields. The Helpful Hints in the website summarize other features (e.g., "Greek letters are spelled out with upper case Greek starting with an upper case letter: Delta vs. delta.").

IOPScience (Institute of Physics)
IOPscience is an online service for journal content published by IOP Publishing. IOPscience embraces innovative technologies to make it easier for researchers to access scientific, technical and medical content.
AIP Scitation
Scitation hosts nearly one million articles published by AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies in fields such as physics, chemistry, geosciences, engineering, acoustics, and includes journals, proceedings, standards and magazines.

Scopus This link opens in a new window
Described as the largest citation-and-abstract database in the world, Scopus features broad coverage of scientific, technical, medical, and social sciences literature, as covered in about 14,000 peer-reviewed resources, as well as academic Web sites from the Scirus database. Scopus also functions as a citation-indexing tool.
Entries dating from 1996 include complete reference (bibliography) listings, while earlier entries (back to 1966) include only citations and abstracts.
Combining Terms You can search for entries containing two or more terms by combining them with "AND" in the search statement. Example: college AND stress
Phrases Search for a multi-word phrase by placing the terms within double quotation-marks. Example: "binge drinking"
Wildcards/Truncation The search system will automatically search for singular and plural forms of a term that is entered. Example: cell will find cell and cells.
A question-mark (?) will replace a single character in a search term. Example: analys?s will find analysis and analyses.
An asterisk (*) can replace any number of characters in a search term. Example: behav* will find behavior, behaviour, behavioral, behaviors, behaviorism, etc.
Citation Indexing Note that most entries include a "Cited By" option, which allows you to see publications which have cited the item you are viewing.
Full Text Many entries in the database include "View at Publisher" links, intended to lead you to the complete text of articles, etc. on publisher Web site. In many cases, we actually will not have access to these materials.
Computers & Applied Sciences Complete This link opens in a new window
Computers & Applied Sciences Complete (CASC) covers the research and development spectrum of the computing and applied sciences disciplines. It contains collected knowledge on traditional engineering challenges & research, and is a resource for research concerning the business and social implications of new technology. CASC provides indexing and abstracts for 1,720 academic journals, professional publications, and other reference sources from a diverse collection. Full text is also available for more than 670 periodicals. Subject areas include the many engineering disciplines, computer theory & systems, new technologies, and social & professional context. Research is aided by the inclusion of searchable cited references for key journals.

arXiv.org The arXiv (pronounced "archive") is a repository of electronic preprints of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, and quantitative finance, which can be accessed online.