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Physics: Bibliographic databases

Library support for Physics

Introduction - what are bibliographic databases?

Bibliographic databases (often just referred to as 'databases')  allow you to search across a wide range of journals and this is the best way to find relevant academic information on your topic. The main bibliographic databases relevant to Physics are listed below.

These databases contain references and abstracts and will link you to the full text of the article where QUB has a subscription to the e-journal.

Constructing a search strategy

Before you start searching the databases, you will need to construct a search strategy: 

  • Break your search topic into key concepts
  • For each concept, think of keywords and synonyms
  • Connect similar keywords using the OR command
  • Combine different concepts using the AND command 
  • Use brackets to group OR terms together

For a more detailed description of search techniques, please see separate page on Planning your search strategy.

Bibliographic databases relevant to Physics

Some of the key bibliographic databases relevant to Physics are listed below. 

  • INSPIRE INSPIRE is an Open Access trusted community hub that helps researchers to share and find accurate scholarly information in high energy physics. 

Top Tip - Reference lists and Citation searching

If you find a relevant article, an easy way to find other articles on the same topic is to look at the Reference list/Bibliography. Most databases also have a Citation search feature which means you can link to other articles that have referred to your original paper. 

Keeping up to date

You can set up email alerts within bibliographic databases to find out what new articles are being published in your area of interest; check out the Help screens in each database for instructions of how to do this.