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Physics and Astronomy Subject Guide: Finding resources for your lab reports and assignments

Subject Guide - help and guidance on finding resources in your subject area

1. Start with Library Search for books, journals, articles and more.

Library Search is a great starting point but not everything is available there. If you want to search across all of our collections, search the databases too!

2. Use research databases to find articles, chapters and other academic papers in your field.

A research database contains detailed records of thousands of journal articles, book references and conference proceedings. These records usually include the article title, authors, abstract (a brief summary), keywords (to enable your search to find it) and more.

Key Physics databases

You can find a full list of the Physics databases on the A-Z databases list.

LibKey

LibKey green teardrop icon

Use LibKey to help you get access to full text articles. 

Click the LibKey icon above to add the extension to your web browser. Select 'University of Exeter' as your institution and login using your Exeter IT login when prompted. 

How to search the databases

Access to thousands of abstracts for articles, conference papers and book chapters across a range of subject disciplines. 

For help with searching Scopus, see this video.

For more information about how to search SCOPUS, see their range of tutorials.

 

Some databases provide information about the content of a journal article, but may not provide full-text access to the actual article itself.

See the following tabs for tips on how to track down the full text.

Is there a  ‘Find this @ Exeter’ option next to your search result?

If so, click on the link to open the Full Text Finder Results.  This lets you know whether it has found a full-text source for the article.

If it has, you will see a link to the full text article:
  

If not, you can check Library Search to see whether we have a subscription to the journal by clicking the Library Title Search link (See option 3).

Make a note of the article details and carry out a search in Library Search.

Change your  Google Scholar settings to show links to University of Exeter subscribed content.

Go to Settings > Library Links and type University of Exeterinto the search box. The box below will appear.

Make sure the University of Exeter box is ticked and click on Save. Run your search in Google Scholar - sometimes the link to the PDF will appear alongside the results, as shown below.

You can also use the LibKey green teardrop iconLibKey browser extension to help you get easy access to full text articles. Select 'University of Exeter' as your institution and login using your Exeter IT login when prompted.

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University of Exeter LibGuide is licensed under CC BY 4.0