Science and Technology Sources on the Internet
There is Such a Thing as a Free Lunch: Freely Accessible Databases for the Public
Sciences and Engineering Librarian & Library Instruction Coordinator
University of California, Santa Barbara
slewis@library.ucsb.edu
Introduction
Most of us are aware that there are free bibliographic databases available on the web. Carl UnCover, ERIC, Agricola, and all of the flavors of Medline are the ones that first come to mind. Many of our libraries are open to community users and if you've ever been the one to break the bad news, "I'm sorry, our databases are not accessible off-campus," or the real clincher, "Only (insert your school name here) faculty, staff and students are authorized to use our databases from off-campus," then you have probably seen reactions ranging from sad disappointment to outright indignation. Nine times out of ten, I can remember to tell them about UnCover and then I have some very happy and satisfied patrons when they hear that UnCover has almost nine million article citations from 18,000 journals in all sorts of subjects.The first time I compiled this list of databases, I included references sources such as InfoPlease and the patent databases. Then I realized there are an infinite number of web pages that cover that type of material. To keep this list unique and manageable, I decided to include databases that produce a list of citations to scientific literature.
Methodology
I was familiar with several free databases, i.e., UnCover, Agricola, Medline, etc. I discovered other databases using the search engine at the California Digital Library and limited my search to databases available to the general public. I found more databases from the web site, Librarians Resource Centre, produced by the Toronto chapter of the Special Libraries Association. Closer to home, I perused the description of databases available at the University of California, Santa Barbara and discovered that electronic journal publishers are now allowing anyone to search their journal collections and get actual citations to articles. I also discovered free databases from various discussion groups and from colleagues here at UCSB.
The Databases
- Academic Press/IDEAL
- http://www.idealibrary.com/
- IDEALSearch allows searching of bibliographic information, abstracts and
added keywords of articles contained in the Academic Press IDEALibrary
of over 170 journals, many from 1996-present.
- ACM Digital Library
- http://www.acm.org/dl/
- ACM Digital Library allows searching of articles from publications of
the Association for Computing Machinery by author and/or keywords taken
from the titles, abstracts and/or full-text. Accounts are available free
of charge to any individual. You do not need to register to browse the
library using the Table of Contents. You do need an account to search,
use binders, and retrieve full-text articles. Coverage: 1985-present
- Agricola:
- http://www.nal.usda.gov/ag98/
- Citations to the literature of agriculture and allied disciplines from
the U.S. National Agriculture Library. Coverage: 1978-present.
- AIDSLINE:
- http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/gw/Cmd
- Literature covering research, clinical aspects, and health policy issues
on AIDS and HIV-related disease. U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Coverage: 1980-present.
- Alcohol and Alcohol Problems Science Database (ETOH):
- http://etoh.niaaa.nih.gov/
- Citations and abstracts to the alcohol abuse literature from the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Coverage: Late 1960's
- present.
- American Chemical Society:
- http://pubs.acs.org/journals/aoc/aoc_search.html
- The American Chemical Society electronic journals site allows
searching of articles from over 25 electronic journals in chemistry
published by ACS. Coverage: 1996-present.
- American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA):
- http://www.aiaa.org/Research/index.hfm?res=3
- Contains author, title, paper number, and conference date and location
information for papers presented at AIAA meetings from 1999 to the
present. AIAA's technical journals are now available online via CatchWord.
- American Institute of Physics
- http://ojps.aip.org/
- Browse tables of contents for AIP electronic journals; most abstracts
are accessible.
- ASCE Civil Engineering Database:
- http://www.pubs.asce.org/cedbsrch.html
- Citations to all American Society of Civil Engineers publications.
Provides Access to over 80,000 bibliographic and abstracted records.
Coverage: 1973 - present.
- Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service:
- http://adswww.harvard.edu/ads_abstracts.html
- NASA-funded database provides access to four sets of abstracts:
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Physics and Geophysics, and
Preprints. Coverage: 1975 - present.
- Bioethicsline:
- http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/
- Ethical, legal and public policy issues surrounding health care and
biomedical research. Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University.
Coverage: 1973-present.
- Carl UnCover
- http://uncweb.carl.org/
- Database of current article information taken from well over 18,000
multidisciplinary journals. UnCover contains brief descriptive information for
more than 8,800,000 articles which have appeared since fall 1988.
UnCover offers you the opportunity to order fax copies of the articles
from this database.
- Cambridge University Press Journals Online
- http://www.journals.cup.org/
- Cambridge University Press allows searching of articles from its
electronic journals by journal title, author, author affiliation, and/or
keywords taken from the titles, abstracts and/or full-text. Coverage:
1990-present.
- Cancerlit:
- http://cnetdb.nci.nih.gov/cancerlit.html
- Comprehensive coverage of the cancer literature from the U.S. National
Cancer Institute. Coverage: 1963-present.
- CatchWord Journal Search
- http://www.catchword.com/
- CatchWord, Ltd. is an electronic journal host for over 700 journals from
over 45 publishers. The CatchWord search engine allows searching for
articles from that collection of journals by author, article title,
journal title, abstract or by full text. The resulting bibliographic
records are freely available, but full text is available only to
subscribers through CatchWord.
- ChemWeb
- http://www.chemweb.com/
- Free Registration. Search "The Library" for citations to chemistry
journals and ChemWeb's Chemistry Preprint Server. Beilstein Abstracts is
free to members.
- CISTI
- http://cat.cisti.nrc.ca/screens/opacmenu.html
- Database produced by Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical
Information. Materials in the sciences, technology, and medicine.
- Combined Health Information Database (CHID)
- http://chid.nih.gov/
- Provides titles, abstracts, and availability information for health
information and health education resources from the U.S. National
Institutes of Health.
- Contentville
- http://www.contentville.com/
- Search magazines, books, dissertations, screenplays, speeches, etc.
Citations are free, text is not. Some materials available free on other
web sites (speeches), so check before you pay.
- Digital Dissertations
- http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/gateway
- The most current two years of the Dissertation Abstracts database, over
225,000 citations and abstracts, freely available for searching. The
database represents the work of authors from over 1,000 North American
graduate schools and European universities.
- DOE Reports Bibliographic Database
- http://www.osti.gov/html/dra/dra.html
- Contains citations for Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored scientific
and technical reports distributed by DOE between 1994 to 2000. The
full-text for these bibliographic records has been made available for
public access through the Government Printing Office's Depository Library
Program.
- Earthquake Engineering Abstracts
- http://www.eerc.berkeley.edu/eea.html
- Citations to the earthquake engineering and earthquake studies
literature from the National Information Service for Earthquake
Engineering, Earthquake Engineering Research Center (EERC), UC Berkeley.
Contents include selected technical reports, conference papers,
monographs, and journal articles. Coverage: 1971-present.
- EPA Publications Catalog
- http://www.epa.gov/ncepihom/catalog.html
- Citations to over 5,500 Environmental Protection Agency publications
on a variety of environmental topics.
- Fish and Wildlife Reference Service Bibliographic Database
- http://fa.r9.fws.gov/r9fwrs/dbinfo.htm
- Citations to unpublished research reports on fish and wildlife projects
produced by state agencies from the Fish and Wildlife Reference Service.
- GrayLit Network
- http://www.osti.gov/graylit/
- GreyLit Network allows searching of technical reports from several
different U.S. government agencies (including the Department of Defense,
Department of Energy, NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency) with
a single search. Links to full text when available.
- IEEE
- http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/lpdocs/epic03/
- Browse tables of contents of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers' transactions, journals, magazines and conference proceedings
published since 1988 and all current IEEE standards.
- InfoJump
- http://www.infojump.com/ [Note: Unable to connect 4/7/01]
- InfoJump is an article search engine that indexes electronic periodicals
and online versions of print publications. Consists of 5 million
articles, increasing at the rate of 10,000 articles per day.
- HighWire Press
- http://highwire.stanford.edu/
- The journals HighWire supports correspondingly focus on science,
technology, and medicine (STM). Articles may be searched by author, title
or abstract keyword, or full-text keyword, with the ability to limit by
date range, and to a specific journal or selected group of journals. Free
full-text articles are available.
- HISTLINE
- http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/
- Covers the history of medicine literature from the U.S. National
Library of Medicine. Coverage: 1964-present.
- Institute of Physics (IOP)
- http://www.iop.org/
- The Institute of Physics electronic journals site allows searching of
articles from over 20 electronic journals in physics published by IOP and
allied publishers. Some current issues available for free via username
and password.
- Kluwer
- http://www.wkap.nl/kaphtml.htm/TOCSEARCH
- Kluwer Online's Search function allows searching of tables of contents
and abstracts of articles contained in the Kluwer Online collection of
over 250 journals, many from 1996-present.
- Los Alamos National Laboratory E-Print Archive
- http://www.arxiv.org/
- Research papers in the area of physics and related disciplines,
mathematics, nonlinear sciences, computational linguistics, and
neuroscience.
- MEDLINE (PubMed)
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
- Citations to journal articles in all areas of medicine and health
sciences from the. U.S. National Library of Medicine. Coverage: 1966-present.
- Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library (NCSTRL)
- http://cs-tr.cs.cornell.edu/
- International collection of computer science research reports and
papers. Coverage: 1976-present.
- OLD MEDLINE
- http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/gw/Cmd
- Citations published in the 1960 - 1965 Cumulated Index Medicus; covers
the fields of medicine, preclinical sciences, and allied health sciences.
U.S. National Library of Medicine.
- POPLINE
- http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/
- Citations to the literature of population, family planning, and related
health issues U.S. National Library of Medicine. Coverage: 1970-present
(including selected citations back to 1886).
- Project Muse
- http://muse.jhu.edu/search/search.pl
- A searchable index of the 40 Johns Hopkins University Press journals
online with Project Muse. Searching is available for over 5,000 articles,
including author, year, journal title and keywords from titles, subjects
or full-text.
- PubSCIENCE
- http://pubsci.osti.gov/
- Contains current article information taken from the journals of more
than a dozen participating science publishers, plus all the citations
from the DOE Energy database. Focuses on the physical sciences and other
energy-related disciplines.
- ResearchIndex
- http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/
- ResearchIndex is a scientific literature digital library that aims to
improve the dissemination and feedback of scientific literature.
ResearchIndex indexes Postscript and PDF research articles on the web.
Produced by the NEC Corporation Research Institute.
- Royal Society of Chemistry
- http://www.rsc.org/cgi-shell/empower.exe?DB=rsc-e-all
- The Royal Society of Chemistry electronic journal site allows
searching of articles from more than 20 electronic journals in chemistry
published by RSC and allied publishers.
- Selected Water-Resources Abstracts
- http://water.usgs.gov/swra/
- Citations to USGS abstracts on water resources. U.S. Geological Survey.
There are about 10,000 abstracts in the entire data base. Coverage: 1977
- present.
- SPACELINE
- http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/
- Citations to the space life sciences research literature from the U.S.
National Library of Medicine. Coverage: 1961-present.
- TOXNET & TOXLINE
- http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/
- System of full-text and bibliographic databases oriented to toxicology
and related areas. Includes Toxline that has citations dealing with the
toxicological, pharmacological, biochemical and physiological effects of
drugs and other chemicals.
- Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) Database
- http://199.79.179.82/sundev/search.cfm
- TRIS contains more than half a million records of published and ongoing
research on all modes and disciplines in the field of transportation.
TRIS is produced and maintained by the Transportation Research Board at
the National Academy of Sciences. Coverage: 1960s-present.
- Wiley Interscience
- http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/simplesearch
- Access to tables of contents and abstracts for some 300 Wiley
journals is available to guest users.
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