The Library provides access to a huge number of journals, magazines and conference proceedings. For web searching we recommend installing a browser plugin like LibKey Nomad. This will make finding academic sources much easier by signposting you to the full text of paid-for and open access resources.
Beyond web searching, there are two highly-effective ways of finding and accessing this type of scholarly information:
Publications from ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and other publishers.
From Cornell University, this free, open access archive has around 2 million scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics
ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, includes journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, dissertations and theses, and books dating back to 1966.
Technical literature from IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology). Contains journals, conference papers, technical standards, ebooks and more.
JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.
Principal database for research in mathematical sciences published by the American Mathematical Society (AMS).
O'Reilly for Higher Education (OHE) is a collection of full-text books and other resources specializing in computer programming and information technology. The database includes more than 35,000 book titles, plus 30,000+ hours of video, proven learning paths, case studies, expert playlists, audio books, and more.
Scopus includes references to journal articles, conference proceedings and books relating to science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts & humanities.
A business data statistics portal containing more than 1 million statistics from over 22,500 sources (including both national and international data); over 80,000 topics in 177 multidisciplinary categories, ranging from agriculture to media and marketing; market data, consumer behaviour, demographics and opinion polls; 4,500 Statista Dossiers and Industry Reports; 41,000 studies & reports from third parties.
Search the world’s leading scholarly journals, books, and proceedings in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
Includes: Science Citation Index; Social sciences Citation Index; Arts and Humanities Citation Index; Arts and Humanities Citation Index; Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science; Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities.
zbMATH Open is the world's most comprehensive and longest-running abstracting and reviewing service in pure and applied mathematics. The database provides easy access to bibliographic data, reviews and abstracts from all areas of pure mathematics as well as applications, in particular to natural sciences, computer science, economics and engineering. It also covers history and philosophy of mathematics and university education.
Google Scholar provides a broad search of scholarly literature. It covers multiple disciplines and sources.
Using Google Scholar off campus
To get full-text links in your Google Scholar results, you must first tell Google Scholar that you have access to the University of Bristol library subscriptions by
You will now see 'Get It @ Bristol Univ' links next to items in your Google Scholar results that you can use to access the full-text provided by library subscriptions.
Print Journals
If an electronic version is not available, we may have it in print. This is sometimes the case for older journal articles (pre-1999). Print copies of journals and conference proceedings are held in our libraries and can be located using Library Search. If in doubt, please contact your Subject Librarian.
Journals are regular publications that contain articles on current research. The purpose of the article is for the author(s) to outline their research and present their findings and conclusions. This in-depth, up-to-date information is not likely to be found in books and is why journal articles are important in finding supporting evidence for assignments.
If you want to do a thorough search of the literature on a topic, the best way to do this is to use a database. A database indexes journals and other sources of information, meaning you may search across all these indexed sources at once.
Databases are not always easy to use. To make sure you use databases to their full potential, book onto one of our training sessions, or get in touch to arrange a chat.
Many bibliographic databases allow you to set search alerts which will automatically inform you of new publications issued on topics that are of interest to you.
To set up a search alert you will normally have to take 4 steps:
Citation alerts can be set to automatically notify you when a particular research article or conference paper is cited by a new publication appearing in a bibliographic database.
You may wish to use one of the following platforms to help you discover the latest papers on a topic or from a particular journal as soon as they are published online:
Some databases also allow you to set up citation alerts to an author rather than a single publication. You can use citation alerting to help you keep track of who is citing your own work. Citation alerts can be set up on scientific literature databases such as SCOPUS and Web of Science.
