Summon is a general search engine for articles and books available through UBC Library.
It is quite useful in locating university level sources on topics of broad interest, such as safe cycling and the other proposed topics for the research report.
With a topic like safe cycling, instead of just typing those words into the search box, try typing safe AND bicycle AND transportation. Use the limiters on the left to select Scholarly & Peer Review articles, limit to the last 5 years, then select resources that are relevant to your engineering perspective.
To find peer-reviewed, university level articles, the best places to search are:
*Note: You will need to login with your CWL to access these databases if you are off-campus.
Research Expectations
Research expectations vary by professor; please read your syllabus and assignments closely.
Searching Summon will retrieve a wide range of types of sources, all available through UBC Library.
Steps to effective research in Summon:
Compendex Engineering Village is a database that contains over 30 million records of published material in the field of engineering including journal articles, conferences proceedings, technical standards and more. It is the top database that we recommend for conducting engineering research.
Scopus is an interdisciplinary database containing more than 87 million documents covering 240 disciplines, including engineering. As engineering problems often require the knowledge of many disciplines to solve, an interdisciplinary perspective is very valuable. The skills covered in the Design a Better Search video apply to searching Scopus.
Image description: Screenshot of Scopus search results page, showing the search box at the top and highlighting the default search fields, the ability to use Boolean logic in the search field, the default results display by date, and the UBC eLInk for full text under each result.
Image description: Screenshot of Scopus subject filter which is necessary to limit results by discipline, as Scopus covers many subjects