Researcher Services
SEARCH SKILLS TO LEARN: Where to search? Use Subject Guides to find relevant database(s), use database descriptions to choose appropriate databases. What search terms to use? Start with what you have, be open to new terms, adapt, keep search notes Basic Article database searching skills: Most databases allow: truncation; adding alternate terms; boolean searching; sorting, refining & exporting results. Some show citations for articles.
Use Web of Science to find scholarly articles in all disciplines. This database can also be used to identify articles that cite an author or article that you specify. Coverage: 1900 – present. Cited Reference Searching: 1900 – present.
Scopus indexes, selectively abstracts and provides citation analysis for approximately 20,000 peer-reviewed journals from more than 5,000 international publishers, as well as 2,600 open access journals, published sets of conference proceedings, trade publications, books, patents (from the USPTO, European Patent Office, Japan Patent office, World Intellectual Property Organization and the UK Intellectual Property Office) and millions of selected web pages. Coverage extends across disciplines in the life and health sciences, the physical sciences, the social sciences and the arts and humanities.
The most comprehensive bibliographic database of engineering research literature, containing references to over 5000 engineering journals and conferences. About half the citations (from 2600 journals and conferences) include abstracts and indexing in the records. Coverage: 1884 – present.
SciFinder is the most comprehensive bibliographic database for scholarly research in the field of chemistry. It contains over 52 million citations and indexes over 50,000 journals, covering all aspects of chemistry, including chemical aspects of: biology and life sciences, engineering and materials science, food science, geology, medicine, physics, and polymer science. SciFinder also allows searching of chemical substances, chemical reactions, and includes some property data and spectra. It is the online version of Chemical Abstracts.
Coverage: 1907 – present (with selected pre-1907 material)
Cited Reference Searching: 1996 – present (allows you to identify who is citing an article)
SciFinder Auto-Alert: Keep Me Posted Receive an email when new articles are published you your topic
SciFinder System Recommendations/Structure Editor/Java (optional)
SciFinder can only be used by UC students, faculty and staff.
SciFinderN (new platform) Help – How to Use “Classic” SciFinder Help – How to Use SciFinder Troubleshooting
Articles from popular magazines and scholarly journals for the humanities, social sciences, physical and biological sciences, engineering, business and interdisciplinary fields, with over 5,500 full-text periodicals. Also includes indexing for some newspapers, books and primary sources. Coverage: 1887 – present.
Indexes all types of materials in the area of public affairs and public policy – journal articles, books and book chapters, reports, government documents. Topics include agriculture, banking, demographics, education, environment, finance, government, health, law, legislation, political science, social sciences, and statistics.
PPIC publications range from 1 page fact sheets to in-depth reports, focusing on higher education, water policy, and statewide issues. PPIC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that conducts fact-based research to help the state find practical responses to a range of policy challenges.
The Pew Research Center provides public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research, without taking a policy position. The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world.
News on energy and environment issues from E&E News, a Washington, D.C. online news organization that covers energy and environmental policy, markets and science.
NTRL provides access to government-sponsored research, development and technical reports with full-text access to reports that have been digitized. Searches over 3 million reports with links to over 800,000 full-text reports. Coverage: 1964-
DOE funded science, technology, and engineering research. Includes: DOE (& predecessor) journal articles, manuscripts, and related metadata; technical reports; datasets; scientific software; patents; conference and workshop papers.
U.S. Department of Deference (DoD) and government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information.
Options for accessing online journal articles are numerous and evolving. See below for options. Help or links to short videos are included.
Note: some of these options rely on new techniques for accessing library subscribed content (and therefore only work for journals where we have a paid online subscription). Others provide easy access to open access articles or pre-prints, where no subscription is required.
Use the UCD Library Catalog or MELVYL catalog or the Journals A-Z list
to request articles and books we do not own or subscribe to
This allows you to easily access articles the UC Davis Library subscribes to online.
NOTE: to access subscribed content from off-campus, you must install and login to the VPN client.
From the Google Scholar Settings page:
Click on Library Links in the left toolbar
Search for and check these options: (as shown in the image below)
California Digital Library –UC-eLinks
University of California, Davis – UCD-eLinks
Open WorldCat – Library Search
Click SAVE
Now when you search in Google Scholar: you should see the UC-eLinks link on the right side of your search results.
A browser add-on which installs a browser button for easy access to Google Scholar from any web page.
Search google for:”Google scholar button [name of your browser]”
Kopernio is a free browser plug-in made by Clarivate (Web of Science). It uses journal subscription data from our SFX linker (UC-eLinks) to locate a legally authorized PDF of the article you are looking for.
Highly recommended. Install it in Chrome or Firefox.
After installing, look for the “View PDF” icon when using your browser to search for articles. It appears in the lower left of your screen.
Kopernio video, 1 minute
After installing, look for the green unlocked padlock when using your browser to search for articles. It appears in the middle right of your screen.
Unpaywall video, 1 minute
Similar to Unpaywall, the Open Access button provides both Chrome and Firefox extensions/plug-ins, or your can enter DOIs or citation info at the OA website.
Clicking on the extension button from a paywalled article initiates a search for that article and, where available, provides free access. When free access is not found, OA Button can contact the corresponding author directly to help them make a self-archived version available.
Open Access Button video, 1 minute
BrowZine is a web-based journal engagement platform and mobile app. It allows you to find, follow, and access library licensed e-journals on any device. BrowZine visually presents the library subscribed e-journals in a browsable format.
More Info on Browzine at UC Davis
Getting Started with Browzine video, 11 minutes
ALL online materials: still available (articles, databases, ebooks) you must use VPN to access.
ALL Print materials: unavailable (in print form)
Many in copyright print titles owned by UC campuses are temporarily available thru HathiTrust.
Read online only, no downloading, 60 minute checkouts, can be extended while you are actively using
Available to anyone, no UC credentials required. Contains primarly older materials.
The Library Catalog tells you what the UC Davis library owns, what the call number is, where it is located, and whether or not it is checked out. If there is an electronic version that we subscribe to, the link will be in the catalog.
Use the catalog to locate books, journals, government documents, dissertations, maps, music scores & recordings, movies, and any other materials the library owns.
The MELVYL catalog tells you what all UC campus libraries own, and also searches other institutions. As with the UCD Library Catalog, MELVYL gives records for books, journals, government documents, dissertations, maps, music scores & recordings, movies, and other materials.
MELVYL does index some articles but is not a good option for searching for articles in the sciences. (Click on the ARTICLES link in this guide to access article databases.)
The REQUEST button: allows you to request items from other institutions (UC and non-UC).
Library catalogs only search catalog entries (author, title, subject indexing, etc) not the full text of the book
Google Books searches full-text of books (only titles that Google has scanned), but you cannot access most of them (because they are still under copyright)
But you can use Google Books to identify titles you might be interested in.
–Use Google Books to search for phrases or topics you are interested in (works well for technical terms).
–Then search for the title of the book(s) in the UCD Library Catalog or Melvyl
The ChemWiki is a collaborative approach toward chemistry education where an Open Access textbook environment is constantly being written and re-written by students and faculty members resulting in a free Chemistry textbook to supplant conventional paper-based books. The development of the ChemWiki is currently directed by UC Davis Professor Delmar Larsen.
The UC Davis STEMWiki Hyperlibrary consists of seven pseudo-independently operating and interconnected “STEMWikis” that focus on augmenting post-secondary education in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields.
OCLC catalog: millions of records for books, journal titles and materials in other formats from approximately 12,000 libraries worldwide. Coverage: 1000 A.D. to the present.
Critical reviews covering primary research literature in the biomedical, life, physical, and social sciences. Can provide a good overview topics you are not familiar with. Chemical fields covered include: analytical chemistry; biochemistry; physical chemistry; pharmacology and toxicology; and chemical and biomolecular engineering.
Online: 1996 – present.
Tables of Contents only: 1984 – 1995. Use the library catalog to find these in print.
Over 3,000 books with 2013- current publication dates. The Elsevier eBook license comes with broad and favorable rights for scientific, scholarly and educational uses.
The RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry) ebooks package, includes over 1000 books published since 1968, including the Specialist Periodical Reports series and Tutorial Chemistry Texts.
Springer ebooks package includes over 28,000 scholarly books, covering all scientific disciplines. Books are published in English and German. Book series in chemistry include:
Over 1300 ebooks focused on chemistry, physical sciences, biosciences & engineering. The UC’s purchased all 2011 and 2012 ebooks, including IEEE ebooks (older years on IEEE Xplore platform).
Use the UCD Library Catalog or MELVYL catalog to find which journals we subscribe to, either online or in print.
Online subscriptions: the catalog will give the link. NOTE: we sometimes get online content for different years from different sources, R-E-A-D the fine print.
Print subscriptions: the catalog will give you the call number, location, and indicate whether or not it is checked out.
Lists journals that UC Davis has a online or print subscription to.
You can use Google Scholar to search for journals (or articles). Google has no way of telling you which online journals UC Davis subscribes to, unless you set your Google Scholar preferences to show UC-eLinks (see ARTICLE PLUG-INS & QUICK ACCESS above).
On-Campus: You should be able to access any online journal that UC Davis subscribes to.
Off-Campus: You must install the VPN client first, to access online journals UC Davis subscribes to.
No UCD Online Subscription?: We may have a print subscription. Check the library catalog . If we do not have a print or online subscription, you can request articles through Interlibrary Loan.
CRCNetBase: Engineering Handbooks
A large collection of online engineering handbooks, full-text and searchable. Extremely useful for:
Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology
An online encyclopedia focused on chemical engineering, a very good resource for topics involving manufactured items, materials, or processes used in manufacturing.
Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry
Another online encyclopedia focused on chemical engineering, Ullmann’s is also a very good resource for topics involving manufactured items, materials, or processes used in manufacturing.
Properties tab, Chemistry Subject Guide
Handbooks/Properties tab, Materials Science Subject Guide
Print Location: PSE Reference QD65 C4 [year]
A large collection of engineering handbooks. Provides a broad focus on engineering.
AccessEngineering 3 year pilot, through 12/2021. Send feedback or questions to Cory Craig
AccessEngineering is an engineering reference tool that provides access to a collection of authoritative, regularly updated engineering reference information. It includes dynamic online features, such as faculty made instructional, videos, calculators, interactive tables and charts, as well as personalization tools allowing users to organize crucial project information.
This large collection includes classic handbooks such as Perry’s Handbook for Chemical Engineers and Marks’ Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers, as well as newer resources, such as Mechatronics in Medicine.
Limiter | What Is Searched | Example |
(search terms) site:*.gov | only government web sites | (energy policy) site:*.gov |
(search terms) site:*[gov agency URL] | specific government web sites for DOE: google to find that DOE URLs all end in energy.gov |
(energy policy) site:*energy.gov (for Dept. of Energy); (energy policy) site:*.epa.gov (for Env. Prot. Agency), etc. |
(search terms) site:*.edu | university & college web sites | (energy policy) site:*.edu |
(search terms) site:*.org | domains that end in .org | (energy policy) site:*.org |
(search terms) site:*.mil | Military sites (mainly US?) | (energy policy) site:*.mil |
(search terms) site:*.com | commercial sites | (energy policy) site:*.com |
This isn’t foolproof, or comprehensive, other domains exist, more info: Generic Top-Level Domain |
Limiter | What Is Searched | Example |
quotation marks | Forces an exact-match search. Words have to appear as given, same order |
Example: “Fender® Guitar Owner’s Manuals” |
Proximity search | Proximity search: term1 within 5 words of term2 |
(energy policy) around(5) biofuel |
Filetype | tells Google to return only results for a specific type of file, such as PDF | Example: seo filetype:pdf |
Source | Allows you to choose a specific source in Google News. | apple source:nytimes |
Site | Limit your search to a single site. (See above for limiting to a type of site (i.e., all sites ending in .edu)) | Example: STEM site:*.ucdavis.edu |
For more on Advanced Google Searches, see: Google: https://www.google.com/advanced_search |
Mendeley is citation management software.
Creating an account will give you access to both the web version and the desktop version.
Covers:
Endnote is citation management software that allows you to store, manage, and format bibliographic citations, and easily change formatting of citations in Word documents. Available free to UC Davis students, faculty & staff (campus has a site license).
Two versions are available:
Covers (for both versions):
Citation Guides:
Commonly used citation styles including: APA, CSE, Chicago, MLA and others.
ACS Style Guide, Chapter 14:
American Chemical Society (ACS) guidelines for citations of all types. See Table 14-2 (pgs 292-293) for common types of references with examples.
ACS Style Guide: An important reference for all chemists. In addition to providing citation guidelines, the ACS Style Guide includes chapters on:
Print: PSE Library Reference: QD8.5 A25 [YEAR]
CASSI Journal Abbreviations:
Use to look up journal abbreviations used in chemistry.
Engineering: IEEE Citation Reference 5 page PDF
Short & efficient guide to IEEE/engineering citation format.
Engineering: IEEE Editorial Style Manual 23 page PDF
Citation formats and editorial guidelines for IEEE Transactions, Journals, and Letters. Includes abbreviations for IEEE publications.
2020: developed, updated, used by C. Craig as subject guide.