When looking for academic journal articles you can use the 'everything' search in Library Search or search directly in the databases below, which we’ve selected as being most relevant to your subject area.
Databases are the best place to find academic journal articles as they offer advanced search tools, metric data, and export options for referencing. These databases also often provide access to information types such as conference papers, book chapters, review articles, trade magazines, and more. BrowZine can also be used to explore e-journal titles in your subject.
While most of our collection is now available digitally, some titles may only be accessible in print. You can find these journal titles using an ‘everything except articles’ search in Library Search.
You’ll also find links to essential reading for your programme in your module reading lists on Canvas.
Key Databases and E-journal Collections
Databases will either provide you with the full text of the journal or they will give you the bibliographic details of an article. Where full text is not available, look for the
link and follow this to see if we have the full text available via Library Search.
Subject databases
Subject databases are tailored to particular subject areas. They tend to use precise terminology relating to the subject area, making searches more accurate, and can include subject specific tools and features.
- Compendex (Ei Engineering Village) This link opens in a new window
Compendex® in Engineering Village is an interdisciplinary engineering database with over 9 million records referencing 5,000 engineering journals and conference materials dating from 1884. Coverage includes nuclear technology, bioengineering, transportation, chemical and process engineering, light and optical technology, agricultural engineering and food technology, computers and data processing, applied physics, electronics and communications, control, civil, mechanical, materials, petroleum, aerospace and automotive engineering as well as narrower subtopics within all these and other major engineering fields. Numeric data is indexed so results can be filtered within specific data parameters.
- Policy Commons: Global Think TanksGlobal Think Tanks is a collection of objective, fact-based research from the world’s leading policy experts, think tanks, IGOs and NGOs. It provides in-depth search and access to some 5 million reports from over 25,000 organisations.
- TechRxivTechRxiv (pronounced "tech archive") is an open, moderated preprint server for unpublished research in electrical engineering, computer science, and related technology.
- ACM Digital Library This link opens in a new window
The full-text collection of all ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) publications, including journals, conference proceedings, technical magazines, newsletters and books.
- arXiv This link opens in a new windowAn open access archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Not peer-reviewed.
- bioRxivbioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive") is an open access online archive and distribution service for unpublished preprints in the life sciences. Covers subject such as animal behaviour, biochemistry, bioengineering, biology, genetics, pharmacology, Zoology and more.
- CogPrintsSelf archiving subject repository for all aspects of cognition science.
- IEEExplore This link opens in a new window
Delivers full text access to high quality technical literature, journal articles, conference papers and standards, from the IEEE and IET. Covers topics such as electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics.
- Institute of Physics (IOP) Journals This link opens in a new windowFull-text access to journals on subjects such as astronomy, particle & nuclear physics, medical physics & biophysics, quantum science and more.
- Knovel eBook Collection This link opens in a new window
As well as all aspects of engineering, Knovel is useful for biotechnology, computing, food science, marine technology, molecular biology and chemistry. Subjects covered include technical reference books. There are Interactive graphs and tables,material and substance properties data and interactive equations. The Data Search tool can be used to build queries around different materials or substances.
- SAGE Journals Online This link opens in a new windowSearchable database providing full-text access to over 450 Sage titles. We have full-text access to almost all of them from 1999 onwards.
- Science Direct This link opens in a new windowScienceDirect provides full text-access to journal articles published by Elsevier.
Multidisciplinary databases
Much like Library Search, multidisciplinary databases cover a wide range of topics and are a great place to scope your search, or to use if your topic covers more than one subject area.
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowAs a comprehensive, multidisciplinary resource, this database indexes peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, conference proceedings, and trade publications. It supports cited reference searching to explore the literature in depth, along with tools for citation tracking, author and affiliation searches, visual analysis of results, journal analysis, and author identification for those interested in publishing.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowWeb of Science is a multidisciplinary database, which indexes scholarly journal articles, books, book chapters and conference proceedings. It provides cited reference searching, so you can navigate forward and backward through the literature to uncover all the information relevant to your research. Use citation reports to see citation activity and geographical trends and the ‘analyse results’ tool to identify trends and publication patterns.
- Semantic Scholar*Log in using your University log-in details*
Semantic Scholar is an artificial intelligence–powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. It uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.
- SAGE Research Methods CasesA collection of case studies showing the challenges and successes of doing research, written by the researchers themselves. They explain why the researchers chose the methods they did, how they overcame problems in their research and what they might have done differently with hindsight. Cases are peer-reviewed and cover a range of disciplines including social sciences, science, arts, technology and medicine.
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