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URSI

Resources and help for the Undergraduate Research Summer Institute

Multidisciplinary and Key Databases

Scopus
Scopus is an abstracts and citations database of peer-reviewed literature. It indexes nearly 23,000 peer-reviewed journals (including open access journals), trade journals, book serials and non-serials, conference proceedings, and patents. Scopus is multidisciplinary, covering life and health sciences, agriculture, environment, engineering, technology, social sciences, urban planning, and more.
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Web of Science
Web of Science (WoS) offers access to a variety of abstract and citation databases that support scientific and scholarly research. The Web of Science Core Collection includes Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Conference Proceedings Citation Indexes, Book Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Current Chemical Reactions, and Index Chemicus.
Includes Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED); Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI); Book Citation Index - Science (BCKI-S); Book Citation Index - Social Sciences & Humanities (BCKI-SSH); Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI); Current Chemical Reactions (CCR-EXPANDED); and Index Chemicus (IC)
SciFinder-n
SciFinder is the only research tool with access to the world’s most reliable and largest collection of substances, reactions and references. SciFinder excels with its wider coverage of literature and patents from ca. 1965 forward, its comprehensive registration of all types of chemical compounds, polymers, and mixtures, and its more thorough coverage of organic reactions after 1985. CAS also scans more source publications, indexes new material more rapidly, and is updated daily.
PubMed
PubMed is a free resource that is developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It contains over 26 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.

Other Databases to Try

OAlster
OAIster has millions of records harvested from institutional repositories of nearly a thousand institutions including MIT, CalTech, Stanford etc. Use it to find articles, theses, technical reports and other gray literature. Most but not all links go to fulltext or to a research website.
Google Scholar
Web-generated database of articles spanning all disciplines and harvested by Google from the websites of academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, etc.
Microsoft Academic Search
Free academic search engine developed by Microsoft Research that provides innovative ways to explore scientific publications, authors, conferences, journals, organizations and keywords.

SciFinder Quick Tip

To use SciFinder you must first create an account. Please create an account before using SciFinder for the first time. https://origin-scifinder.cas.org/registration/index.html?corpKey=38C3B603-86F3-50AB-5DAE-FE0ECBA004F9

What are Review Articles?

Review articles are a particular type of scholarly article that provide a systematic overview and analysis of the primary literature in a particular field. Review articles sum up the current state of research including the major advances and discoveries, ongoing debates, and where there are gaps in our knowledge that require more research. Because review articles discuss and cite the research articles that are advancing the field, you can quickly get an idea of who the major researchers are in that field.

What is Peer Review?

Depending on the policies of a particular scholarly journal, before an article is accepted for publication in that journal, it must undergo peer review. The editor of the journal will identify a few other scholars (peers) who have expertise on the subject that the article is about and send a copy of the article to those individuals. The peers will review the article for quality and rigor and give the editor their comments and recommendations. Depending on what the peers say, the editor may reject the article (if the peers found it to be substandard), or ask the author to revise and improve the article based on recommendations the peers provided. If the article needs revision then the author will make the necessary alterations and then resubmit the article. The article will usually be accepted for publication if the author makes all the required revisions.