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Research Skills for Engineering Students

This tutorial supports the development of engineering information literacy skills

Search Compendex Engineering Village

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.

Compendex search results screen

screenshot of search interface in Compendex database showing key features

Image description: Screenshot of the Compendex search results screen which displays the search box at the top. Highlighted is the use of Boolean operators, and the ability to add a search field to expand the search box. Limiting by date and document type are circled just below the search box. The UBC eLinks is highlighted as the way to connect to full text.

Compendex controlled vocabulary menu

screenshot of controlled vocabulary feature for search results in compendex

Image description: Screenshot of the Compendex database highlighting the controlled vocabulary filter. Clicking view more allows you to see all of the subtopics contained within your results list.

Article record in Compendex

Image description: Screenshot of the Compendex database record display, highlighting the UBC eLink, the journal and article title, additional citation info, as well as controlled vocabulary and additional keywords. 

Additional training materials from Compendex Engineering Village

Search Scopus

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. 

Screenshot of Scopus search results

screenshot of the Scopus database highlighting the search box, default search fields, default date display for results, and UBC eLink for full text access

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.

Screenshot of Scopus subject filter

screenshot of Scopus subject filter, used to narrow results by subject

Image description: Screenshot of Scopus subject filter which is necessary to limit results by discipline, as Scopus covers many subjects

Test your knowledge: Compendex search

  1. Go to the Compendex Engineering Database

  2. Select "Subject/Title/Abstract" as the field to search and then type: earthquake OR seismic 

  3. Pay attention to how many results you have. This is a broad search for any articles that deal with earthquakes or seismicity

  4. Now you have two options:
    1. you can amend your additional search to group your keywords with brackets, and add the concept of bridges to make your search more specific: (earthquake OR seismic) AND bridge
    2. you can use the "add a term" box provided at the top of the left-hand column of filter options and type: bridge
  5. You will now have fewer results as you have made your search more specific
  6. You can narrow your results again by adding the concept of carbon fibre, but as the word fibre has two common spellings, type: ("carbon fibre" OR "carbon fiber"). Again, you can either amend your original search or "add a term". Make sure to place any phrases in quotation marks to force those words to remain together.
  7. Review your result list.
  8. Limit by date and select only articles published in the last few years
  9. You should now have a list of relevant results. However, if your results are still not focussed enough use the Controlled Vocabulary filter to help select another term and limit your results to add in that term
  10. Click on at least three results and read the abstracts