Key Databases
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowSearch citations and abstracts for journal articles, conference proceedings, and other resources in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
- Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new windowMultidisciplinary database of journal articles and conference proceedings, used for citation analysis of research. Includes access to EndNote Basic, a web-based version of EndNote.
Additional databases
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowA scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database providing indexing and abstracts for thousands of journals and other publications.
- Agricultural & Environmental Science Database (AESD) This link opens in a new windowThe Agricultural & Environmental Science database (AESD) facilitates in-depth research and comprehensive literature reviews across the earth, atmospheric & aquatic sciences. Includes Agricola.
- Business Source Ultimate This link opens in a new windowProvides access to journal articles, books and videos related to business, management, economics, banking, finance, and accounting. Use for finding articles, case studies, and company and industry information.
- Elsevier ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowFull text electronic journals covering the physical sciences, applied sciences, life sciences, social sciences, business & economics. Also includes reference works, book series, and handbooks.
- IEEE Xplore Digital Library This link opens in a new windowThe IEL database provides fulltext access to more than 140 technical journals, over 1000 standards, and approximately 900 annual conference proceedings published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
- JSTOR Collection This link opens in a new windowIn addition to fully-searchable journal backfiles, also includes current issues for some titles as well as collections of primary-source documents such as their '19th century British pamphlets'.
- PsycInfo (includes full text from PsycArticles) This link opens in a new windowCovers psychology and the psychological aspects of various other disciplines. Contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations.
- PubMed (1946 - present) This link opens in a new windowPremier database containing over 30 million references to journal articles in life sciences with a focus on biomedicine. Freely available and includes MEDLINE. This link goes to the version with UBC elink.
Database Search Strategies
Here are a few tips which can make your database searches more effective:
Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT
- Most databases assume an AND - they search for documents matching all the keywords you search for.
- OR can be very useful when you're not finding enough results - add in some synonyms to broaden your search. Use parentheses to gather these synonyms together and combine with another concept.
- NOT is used to exclude a word from your search. Use with caution.
Phrase searching: put quotes around your keywords to find the words together, in that order. Might limit your search too much; use carefully.
Truncation: in most databases, an asterisk at the end of a word will find all different endings.
- Example: “life cycle” AND (analysis OR assess*)
Controlled vocabulary or subject headings: these are terms added to articles or books to help you find related topics. In some databases, you can click on these or add them to your search to help improve your results.