Physics and Astronomy: Article Databases & Indexes

Resources for beginning research in Physics and Astronomy, including databases, pre-prints, journals, and websites.

Databases & Indexes

A variety of databases, primarily indexes to articles in journals or conference proceedings, are available through the UW Libraries, but are often UW restricted. Items in the databases are not necessarily held in the UW Libraries. If UW holdings are not given, check the UW Libraries Catalog.

INSPEC This link opens in a new window
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UW Restricted. EV2 INTERFACE.
Indexes and abstracts for articles from journals and conferences in the physical sciences, electrical engineering, and computer science. Includes Physics Abstracts. Updated monthly.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
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UW Restricted
Includes Science Citation Index Expanded, with searchable author abstracts and cited references, covering over 5000 major journals in the sciences. Cited reference search allows searching forward and backward in time.

Preprint Databases (including ArXiv)
electronic preprint databases in physics, astronomy, math, and computer science

Other Relevant Databases and Indexes

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
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UW Restricted
Scholarly and general interest sources in business, medicine, humanities, social sciences, and science and technology.

ARIBIB: Astronomisches Rechen-Institut BIBliographical Database
References to astronomical literature, from 1899 to 1968 based on the printed bibliography 'Astronomischer Jahresbericht'(AJB), and from 1969 to mid-2000, based on the printed bibliography 'Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts' (AAA).
Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
Indexes and abstracts for astronomy, astrophysics, physics and geophysics literature; links to scanned images of articles from major astronomical journals; access to NASA astronomical data archives.
Compendex (1884- )
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UW Restricted
Now part of Engineering Village 2 (listed below). Comprehensive coverage of the world's literature in engineering. Abstracts over 4500 journals, proceedings, and government reports.
Dissertations & Theses: Abstracts and Indexes (1861- )
UW Restricted
Bibliographic citations from 1861, and abstracts from 1980, for doctoral dissertations completed at accredited North American universities; full text for recent UW dissertations.

Compendex This link opens in a new window
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UW Restricted
Includes Compendex & Inspec for journal abstracts and links to full-text, US Patent Office for patent information, CRC Press handbooks for technical engineering information, and Industry Specs and Standards from Techstreet.

GEOREF
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UW Restricted
From the American Geological Institute (AGI), provides access to the geoscience literature of North America from 1693 and for the rest of the world from 1933 to the present.
Google Scholar
Searches peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Note: Does not include all academic publishers.
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (1988- ).
UW Restricted
Indexes journal articles, conference proceedings, books, and dissertations in the history of science, technology, and medicine and allied historical fields. Updated quarterly.

IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window
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UW Restricted
Indexes and full text to over 450,000 IEEE/IEE journal articles, conference papers, and technical standards.
INSPEC This link opens in a new window
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Publications in physics, engineering, communications, computer science, information technology, and related fields.

IOPscience (1874- )
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Indexes and full text to all IOP journals back to 1874.
ISI Journal Citation Reports (1997-)
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Allows evaluation and comparison of journals using citation data drawn from over 7,500 scholarly and technical journals from more than 3,300 publishers in over 60 countries.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
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Citation index for the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

JSTOR
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Older issues of core science journals such as Science and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.
MathSciNet
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Indexes to Mathematical Reviews and Current Mathematical Publications, from 1940.
National Newspapers (ProQuest)
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Indexing and full text of 9 U.S. newspapers including New York Times, Wall Street Journal.
National Technical Information Service - NTIS (1964- )
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Indexes and abstracts of U.S. government-sponsored research and development reports in a broad range of engineering, technology, energy and nuclear science.

WorldCat This link opens in a new window
Over 30 million catalog records and holdings information for libraries around the world.

Preprint Databases (including ArXiv)
electronic preprint databases in physics, astronomy, math, and computer science
PROLA: Physical Review Online Archive (1893- )
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Indexes and full text for American Physical Society journals, plus CrossRef Search with other major scholarly publishers.

SciFinder This link opens in a new window
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Intelligent interface which helps users to search the extensive Chemical Abstracts Databases.

Scitation (1893- )
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AIP's Index to more than one million documents from scholarly journals, magazines, conference proceedings, and other special publications from prestigious scientific societies and technical publishers.

SPIE Digital Library This link opens in a new window
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Indexes to approx. 90,000 full-text papers from SPIE Journals and Proceedings published since 1998.

Superconductivity Papers Database (1987- )
Indexes 68,000+ articles from nearly 60 journals including superconductivity literature.
Union List of Astronomy Serials (ULAS)
Bibliographic information for non-commercial publications of astronomy observatories and research institutions.