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Online Databases and Websites in Science

Citation Guides - correct format for proper documentation 
Databases - scholarly materials, citation indexes and full text
E Books - use free electronic texts when you can't find the printed book 
Quick Reference - quality, credible, and timely reference resources -mostly all are free Specialized Search Engines - gateway sites, specialized search engines, Web portals
Web Directories - subject guides to selective and carefully chosen sites on the Web
Web Resources - selected list of free sites, including subject specific resources

Web Search in a Nutshell - getting started in library research
 

Subscription Databases Available Only to the WSC Community

   McGraw Hill's Encyclopedia of Science and Technology contains the complete text of the best-selling 10th edition. The online site also includes over 2,000 in-depth biographies of leading scientists through history, weekly news updates on breakthroughs and discoveries in science and technology, resources for students, and links to Web sites for further research. Full access to 8,500 articles, 100,000+ dictionary terms, 65,000+ hyper-linked cross references - and  it is updated daily.  

ProQuest Biology Journals - Database with abstracting and indexing for over 285 titles with more than 250 available in full text.

ProQuest Science Journals - Search full text and images for the leading periodicals in science and technology. Subject coverage includes computers, engineering, physics, telecommunications, and transportation. Coverage dating back to 1986 features over 490 titles—with more than 380 available in full text.

ProQuest Computing - Search top computing journals on subjects such as database design, software development, web commerce, LANs, WANs, Intranets, and the Internet. Includes over 350 titles, with nearly 300 available in full text.

  Cambridge Scientific Illumina .  Now includes Biology and Medical databases: Biology Digest (1989+), Medline, Plant Science (1994+), and TOXLINE (1994+). This site also has a great resource called Discovery Guides. There is a wealth of information on current hot topics in science and technology with a detailed review article of each topic, web sites, bibliography, links to cited material and more.  

   Public Affairs International.  Public affairs and worlds issues with coverage from 1972 to the present. An index to over 1/2 million articles, books, government documents, Internet sites and documents from more than 120 countries. Obviously useful for global issues such as affirmative action, AIDS, ethnicity, climate change, political persecution, women's rights, war and conflict, etc.
 

    Academic Search Complete indexes both popular and academic periodicals in all subject areas, including science and technology. Most articles available full text. Search Tips
Also contains EBSCO Animals, an Encyclopedia offering in-depth information describing the nature and habitat of familiar animals; Indexing, abstracts, and full text records.

Academic One File   indexes peer-reviewed, full text articles available in HTML or PDF formats from the world's leading journals and reference sources. Also has full text New York Times content back to 1995, hundreds of podcasts and transcripts from radio and television broadcasts. Search Tips (PDF)
Access to this database is made possible by funding from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, and the six Massachusetts Regional Library Systems.
 

AGRICOLA - FREE  3.3 million bibliographic records covering all aspects of agriculture and allied disciplines; browse by subject, such as animal and veterinary sciences, food and nutrition, natural resources and environment, aquaculture and fisheries, plants and crops - or use the search box. This is the primary public database for access to world-wide agricultural information.
 

Open Science Directory - FREE  contains just over 13,000 free journals, including the Directory of Open Access Journals, and peer-reviewed journals covered by High Wire Press (Stanford University - the largest archive of of free full-text articles in science and medicine). Easy identification of issues and available years.

     Newspapers.   Many of our newspaper databases provide full text news and cover to cover content of the full electronic editions of each newspaper. These are great resources for editorial opinions, current news and regional coverage of items in the sciences to keep you informed of hot topics in these areas. There are also links to other sources such as television news outlets and international sites.
 

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Other Web Resources - selective list of free sites

Subject Specific Sites

Biology

• Bio-Tech's Life Science Dictionary - features over 8,300 terms in biochemistry, biotech, botany, cell biology and genetics.
• Biology Online - includes dictionaries and tutorials, organized by categories and easy to use.
• Biology Browser - a free website service from BIOSIS (Biological Abstracts). Offers thousands of "quality-controlled science links, updated daily"
• National Biological Information Infrastructure - "your home for biological information on the Web." Comprehensive site covering plants and animals, habitats, ecological topics, geographic perspectives and more. A top site. ü
• Tree of Life - information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics
• US Dept. of Agriculture Biotechnology Website - meeting agricultural challenges and consumer needs of the 21st century Links to Other Biotech Websites including international sites
• US Food and Drug Administration - Center for food safety and applied nutrition. Section on food labeling, information for consumers, links to related agencies, international and non-governmental information.
• Yahoo Biology - a very popular site on the Yahoo Directory which is a good jumping off point. Sites are evaluated and you can restrict your search to just biology categories instead of the entire Web.

Chemistry

• Analytical Chemistry Springboard -
• American Chemical Society - Education division
• Chem Tutor - rated a top site by both CRC and the NSF
• Dictionary of Chemistry - from Oxford University Press. Entries for chemical elements have been linked together and from the interactive periodic table. WSC  users only
• Links for Chemists - from the WWW Virtual Library
• Periodic Elements Table - From Chemical & Engineering News
• SciFinder Scholar - Electronic access to Chemical Abstracts, indexing the literature of chemistry. To use this source, you must be in the Library at the computer next to the Reference Desk
• Visual Elements Periodic Table - nice history and information beyond basics
• Web Spectra - established to provide chemistry students with a library of spectroscopy problems
• Yahoo Chemistry - a very popular site on the Yahoo Directory which is a good jumping off point. Sites are evaluated and you can restrict your search to just chemistry categories instead of the entire Web

Math and Computer Science

• ACM Digital Library - Summaries and article information [not full text] from the publications of the Association for Computing Machinery, the leading organization in computing.
• CNET - Provides technology information for buyers, users, and sellers
• Electronic Library of Mathematics - contains online journals, article collections, monographs, and other electronic resources in the field of mathematics. Most of the site is free, except for some periodicals which a certain delay period after which they become freely available.
• Internet Archive - Wayback Machine can look at a Web site and track how it has evolved [see how events like 9-11 were recorded digitally] Now contains over 85 billion archived Web pages.
• MathWorld - published as the CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics. Indexed by subject, includes algebra, applied math, calculus, geometry, and more.
• Mathgate - index to math Internet resources. Targets researchers and students in in higher education. An award-winning service, also offers full-text journals.
• Math Forum - best general math site on the Web. Gold mine for undergraduate students, as well as quality online mathematics education for professors.
• Webopedia - Online dictionary and search engine for computers and Internet technology
• What is - definitions for thousands of the most current IT words
• Yahoo Computer Science - a very popular site on the Yahoo Directory which is a good jumping off point. Sites are evaluated and you can restrict your search to just computer science categories instead of the entire Web
   

General Science & Other Disciplines

• American Physical Society - serves "to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics in public and governmental affairs, and in the international physics community"
• Atlas of Rocks, Minerals, & Textures - part of the "virtual geology" project at the University of North Carolina
• How Stuff Works - "explains simply, with excellent diagrams or pictures, how many common appliances, machines, and technologies work."
• Ten Cool Sites in Science - from the Exploratorium. Every month's site puts up listings of new sites that have been reviewed. Previous choices are available in a subject organized archive.
• World of Science - Eric Weisstein's comprehensive and interactive, searchable encyclopedia of astronomy, scientific biography, chemistry and physics, and mathematics. 
• Selected Internet Resources in Science and Technology - from the Library of Congress Research Centers; links to government agency sites as well as outside links for almost 40 different subject areas in the sciences. Great first stop on your research journey. ü
• Scientific American: Ask the Experts - "sponsored by Scientific American magazine, readers may submit questions to scientific experts and the most interesting questions are archived by topic: astronomy, biology, chemistry, computers, environment, geology, math, medicine, and physics."
• Space Weather - science news and information about the Sun-Earth environment 
   
• High Wire Press - largest archive ; assisting in the online publication of 4.5 million free full-text articles
• MagPortal - updated every few days. Searchable, easy to browse directory of magazine articles on science and technology available online. Topics include biology and life sciences, chemistry, environment & geology, future trends, math, paranormal & hoaxes, physics, space and astronomy.

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Search Engines  - Meta Sites

These are "gateway" sites: they don't have scientific information, but link you to sites that do. Less exciting than TV's Stargate Atlantis, but more practical.

•   Science.Gov - gateway search portal to science databases of 12 U.S. government agencies in one fell swoop. Can filter search results by disciplinary area (environment, health etc.) along with other search features. New 4.0 version in 2007 makes this a far better resource for finding information about scientific papers of federal government agencies than the special government search engines of Google or Microsoft.
• Information Bridge - US Dept. of Energy Scientific and Technical Information. Full text and citations to reports relating to the Dept.'s mission, including a solar energy section.
• Natural Selection - searchable index to hand selected and evaluated Internet resources on the natural world. Coordinated by the Natural History Museum (London)
• New Scientist - From the journal editors, has a search feature, hot topics category, current picks of the best Web links, and organized by category; includes social sciences, and a gateway to U.S. government science and technology resources online. 
• Science Search - for scientists by scientists. Type in a simple term and you'll get related scientific terms to expand or limit your query. Powered by Northern Light, so results are clustered in their custom search folders.
• Scirus - the "most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet." Scirus searches over 200 million science-specific Web pages, enabling you to quickly: Pinpoint scientific, scholarly, technical, math and medical data on the Web, and find the latest reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre prints and journals that general search engines miss. 
• SciNet - "Since 1999,  the Internet's premier science and technology search engine. We continue to provide high quality science links, original science and technology articles, and science and technology pictures."
• Science NetWatch - from Science Magazine; each week since April 1998, scours the Internet and other sources for interesting science sites; searchable
• Science Research - A portal allowing searchable access to numerous scientific journals and databases; can restrict search to a single discipline such as chemistry, biology, computers, math, physics, etc.
• SciCentral - A "Meta directory aimed at researchers covers more than 120 specialties in science, engineering, and medicine, and constitutes a gateway to over 50,000 sites." Searchable. Includes links to journals, databases, funding, and conferences

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Web Directories

There are excellent subject directories on the web. that can point you to the best online resources in specific areas of the sciences. These human guides to the Internet are a great way to find the best of the Web, and often find sites that can't be accessed by search engines. In the sciences, there is a section of hot topic guides called "Discovery Guides" that provide a review article, key citations, and websites on specific scientific topics in the news, prepared by the staff at Cambridge Scientific Abstracts.

Other academic subject directories to use for scholarly material are:

• Librarians Internet Index - Provides a well-organized point of access for reliable, trustworthy, librarian-selected Internet resources. Covers a broad range of subjects, has both a topical directory arrangement and search capabilities.
• InfoMine - Virtual library of scholarly Internet resources. Features well organized access; notable for its collection of annotated and indexed links.
• Academic Info - gateway to freely available academic resources on the web, with annotated entries. General links, related topics, in the news sections.

More subject directories on the web

Citation Format in the Sciences

Credit Web sources in your bibliography and footnotes by using a style manual for correct formatting. In addition to books on reserve in the Library, we have links to online guides available 24X7 whenever you need them. Don't be guilty of plagiarism, even if it is accidental, simply because you don't know how to credit your sources. The list of links is on our Library page entitled Citing Electronic Sources. 

For use of the CBE (Council of Biology Editors - now the Council of Science Editors) Scientific Style and Format manual, see a page from Boston University. [Note that the 7th edition published in 2006 has greatly expanded sections for online citations - manual available in printed form only].

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