Finding and using databases for the College of Engineering

Academic databases are usually the best place to look for scholarly journal articles and other content such as reports and conference papers. We have selected some useful databases below. For further recommendations, go to iFind Research (ifindresearch.swan.ac.uk) and select your school/subject area from the menu.

Please see the guidance on pages 2 and 3 for tips on making searches more effective.

Useful databases

Web of Science

Web of Science includes four large databases – Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Conference Proceedings – which are known as the Core Collection. Each database indexes the core journals in its disciplines. It does not include the full text of journal articles. To check for full text access, click the link to ‘Locate it at Swansea University’. Coverage is from 1970 with weekly updates. The conference database is from 1990.

Accessing Web of Science

  • Connect to Web of Science at
  • Click the orange ‘Click here to access’ button
  • Login with your university username and password if you are at a PC off campus
  • Click the down arrow next to ‘All Databases’ to select ‘Web of Science Core Collection’

Scopus

Scopus is a multi-subject database from Elsevier. It claims to be the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources.

  • Contains 46 million records, 70% with abstracts
  • Nearly 19,500 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide
  • Includes over 4.6 million conference papers

Accessing Scopus

Connect to

If you are off campus look the database up in the library catalogue, iFind (ifind.swan.ac.uk), and follow the link - you will need to enter your universityusername and password. (This is the same as for email and other university services).

Inspec

Produced by the Institution of Electrical Engineers, Inspec is a comprehensive database covering physic, electrical & electronic engineering, computing and control engineering. It contains details of journal articles, conference papers and reports from 1969 onwards.

Accessing Inspec

  • The url for access is long, so type Inspec into iFind, the library catalogue (ifind.swan.ac.uk) and follow the link
  • You will now need to enter your university username and password (this is the same as for email and other university services)
  • You will see a message saying Welcome to Ovid Online. Click ‘Continue’
  • Inspec will automatically go to the Advanced Search. This is usually the best option for your search

Searching databases

Basic

Identify the key terms contained in your topic and also any alternative terms which describe your subject. Type a word or phrase in the search box. Then click on Search. (If you’re using Inspec, it will automatically match your term to terms in the Inspec thesaurus which you can then select on the next screen. If you wish to bypass this feature, uncheck the Map Term to Subject Heading box which you will see below the search box.)

Wildcards

Use a truncation symbol (*) to pick up all possible endings, e.g. comput* to pick up computer, computers, computing, etc

Advanced search tips

  1. It is possible to limit your search to articles in a particular year using the date range/timespan options. (For Inspec, you will need to click on Limits from the search page to open up options which include limiting by publication year.)
  2. If you get too many results, try searching in the article title – change the drop down menu next to the search box, or for Inspec select Title from the options above the search box. If a word is in the title of an article the article is likely to be relevant.
  3. You can search for a particular type of article, for example, a conference paper using the document type/publication type options (visible from the results page in Web of Science, Scopus and Inspec, but also visible on the search screen in Scopus).
  4. You can combine more than one term using and, orornot.

Narrow your search by using ande.g. nanotechnologyand medicine

This only finds records which contain both the word nanotechnology and the word medicine.

Broaden your search by using or e.g. disaster or accident

This will retrieve records which contain the word disaster, the word accident or both words.

Exclude a term from the records you retrieve by using not (for Scopus, use andnot) e.g.“alternative energy”notwaves (in Scopus, “alternative energy andnot waves).

This will find records which contain the wordsalternative energy but exclude any which mention waves.

(Please note for Web of Science, in an All Databases search the not operator may not be applied if a record exists across more than one collection. In which case, the record is retrieved when you run the search.)

  1. Phrase searching – putting words into quotation marks as “alternative energy” in the example above, forces the database to treat them as a phrase and only look for the two words together.
  1. Search within – in Web of Science and Scopus, once you have carried out a search you will see the option to search within results at the left of the screen. This allows you to add in another term to focus your search further. For example, if you had searched for alternative energy you might decide that you are only interested in solar energy and you can now add in that term.

Refining Results

The optionsat the left of the screen allow you to filter your search results. It will give you a list of the most common subjects, authors, keywords etc. so you can choose to view only results which contain the term you select. The language option in Web of Science and Scopus may be useful if you wish to view only articles in English.

Displaying Search Results

  1. Click on the article title to see more detail.
  2. The iGetit@Swansealink (in Web of Science this is Locate it at Swansea University) will find any online version which is available or link you to our library catalogue to see if we have a print version
  3. You can print, e-mail or export records to packages such as EndNote using the buttons at the top of the result list. You can also use Marked List (Web of Science)/ My List (Scopus)/My Projects (Inspec) to store your results. (In Scopus, you will need to click More… to find the option.) You may be asked to create a username and password to use this feature.

Help

For further help please contact your subject librarian. Staff at the Library Desk will find us for you or you can find contact details at

For alternative formats please contact

Tel: 01792 295697 Email:

PP 12/2015