New developments and current research are often first presented as conference papers and/or journal articles. You will also find product reviews, descriptions of methodology, or information on innovations in or applications of particular processes, systems and devices.
The following indexes and databases will help you find this literature:
Top two article databases for electrical and computer engineering:
IEEE Xplore : full-text materials published by IEEE, the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). Includes IEEE Society-sponsored transactions and conference proceedings, books, IET journals and proceedings, and IEEE Standards.
Inspec (1896-current) : covers electrical engineering, physics, computers and control, and manufacturing. Periodical articles and conference papers (1896-current) are the primary materials covered, includes some books, dissertations and reports.
Compendex, INSPEC, and GEOBASE are searched jointly on the Engineering Village Platform. To search only one of the databases, remove the check in the box to the left of the databases you do not wish to search by clicking on the box. If the box is unchecked, that database will not be searched.
Additional technical article databases
ACM Digital Library : materials published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Includes the full text of journals, magazines, transactions, and conference proceedings; ACM materials will display the ACM logo to the left of the citation.
From the search results page, expand your search by clicking the ACM Guide to Computing Literature. This expands your search to references in computing publications from other publishers of journals, conference proceedings, books, dissertations, master’s theses, and technical reports.
Web of Science (1900-current) : Includes article information from journals in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, arts and humanities.
Key feature is the cited reference search, which searches for the articles that have cited a particular author’s work, or a specific article. Try using Citation Mapping to look for articles cited by the author, or have cited a paper.
ScienceDirect : Contains full-text articles in science, engineering and medicine
The Library has an Electrical and Computer Engineering Subject Guide that includes additional information that might be of use for your project. In particular, Industry Standards and Technical Reports. The links below will take you to these sections of the ECE subject guide:
Industry standards are officially agreed-upon methods and procedures for a given activity such as testing, performance, construction, or practice. This resource gives examples of standards available at the Library as well as finding tools for standards that may not be in the Library.
Sponsored or grant-funded research often requires written reports of the research findings. This resource includes databases that cover technical reports from government funded grants or from government agencies.
Review Articles try to summarize the current state of research on a particular topic. Theoretically, the author(s) searches for everything relevant to the topic, and then sorts it all out into a coherent view of the “state of the art” as it stands at the time the article was written. Review Articles will teach you about::
Where research might go next
These articles are a great place to start as they contain the basic information and core articles on a given topic.
Finding Review Articles:
Most article indexes and databases allow you to limit your search to include only review articles. Some databases might use the term "literature review," but it's the same thing. Set up your search like usual, then find the limit for review articles, select it, and run your search.
Example:
If you open up PubMed, you can search for review articles on the drug Paxil by putting “Paxil” in the search bar, then clicking the SEARCH button. Look at the list of filters on the left-hand side of the page of search results. Under “Article Type” you’ll see a link labeled “Review”.
Some publications report the news in a particular trade or industry, while others are more general news sources. These can be helpful when looking for information about an event or product.
A few databases that cover either trade publications or news sources follow.
Top two business/ industry article databases
Best source for finding Product Reviews and Engineering Related News
Applied Science and Technology Source : Best source for finding product reviews and news related (engineering) information. Indexes articles in 800 English-language periodicals
Authors write for a variety of purposes and audiences. Sometimes their content is more suited to a journal article or conference paper, and sometimes to a book or an encyclopedia article. Books contain more material than articles, and that additional material may contain a better overview of an area, or more context. In general, the content will be older, more descriptive, and less research-based than the content of articles. Some databases are listed below that help you identify books.
If you want to search for books, documents and materials, the best place to start is the Library's Catalog / WorldCat Discovery. For an introduction to searching, see the Finding Books video on the Welcome page of this guide.
Another excellent source of books is:
Synthesis Digital Library of Engineering and Computer Science
The "lectures" contained in this resource are intended to provide an overview for specialists to areas that are not their specialty. They are therefore a good introduction into the area covered. You might think of these as short (around 100 pages), focused books.
Titles for which the full-text is available display a check mark in a green circle at the end of the title.