Library Guides: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics Freshman Seminars: Search Strategies

Search strategies

Search strategies

Searching a library database requires you to break your research question into searchable concepts. The library databases work differently than Google and a major pitfall when searching a library database is expecting the search interface to understand language and interpret your search question. Therefore, you will want to:

1. Identify the major concepts of your research topic.
2. Break your topic into major concepts that can be used as search terms. A concept could be a subject term, technical jargon, or a proper noun. These concepts are usually nouns of one or two words.
3. Combine these search terms together, but only one or two concepts at a time.
4. Run your search.
5. If you got no results; change your search terms or remove concepts from your search.
6. If you got thousands of results; add another concept or develop a more exact search by using scientific terminology as search terms. This will narrow your results.
7. Review your search results by looking at the title and abstract. Is the article on your topic? The title can give you a good indication of what the article is about, but sometimes you will need to look at the abstract to determine the topic of the article.

Chemistry and Physics Databases

Physical Review Journals This link opens in a new window
The Physical Review Journal collection of 13 leading peer-reviewed research journals includes Physical Review Letters, Physical Review X, Physical Review, and Reviews of Modern Physics.
IOP (Institute of Physics) Journals This link opens in a new window
IOP Publishing provides publications through which leading-edge scientific research is distributed worldwide. IOP Publishing is central to the Institute of Physics (IOP), a not-for-profit society.
Web of Science - ALL This link opens in a new window
Web of Knowledge provides seamless access to the Science Citation Expanded®, Social Sciences Citation Index®, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index™.
SciFinder (Register for SciFinder) This link opens in a new window
This is the registration point for SciFinder web version. All user's must register, get a username and password before using the web version of SciFinder Scholar.
SciFinder Scholar (Online Access) This link opens in a new window
SciFinder Scholar is a research discovery tool that allows college students and faculty to access a wide diversity of research from many scientific disciplines, including biomedical sciences, chemistry, engineering, materials science, agricultural science, and more!
SciFinder Scholar is provided for the educational learning, teaching and academic research of the current Purdue University Calumet students, faculty and staff. Commercial use of SciFinder is strictly prohibited. Thus, patentability research and research performed with the intention of delivering results outside of the Purdue Calumet Campus are not allowed. Likewise, the distribution of SciFinder data by assignment, sale, sublicense, loan, or other means to an unauthorized user is prohibited. In order to use SciFinder you will need to register athttps://scifinder.cas.org/registration/index.html?corpKey=27ED21CCX86F350ABX2850F66D521E9CE8B3 .
ScienceDirect - All Subscribed Content This link opens in a new window
Elsevier ScienceDirect is a leading scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters from more than 2,500 journals and almost 30,000 books.
Springer Link This link opens in a new window
Providing corporate researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols and reference works.
Annual Reviews This link opens in a new window
Since 1932, Annual Reviews has offered comprehensive, timely collections of critical reviews written by leading scientists. Annual Reviews volumes are published each year for 29 focused disciplines within the Biomedical, Physical, and Social Sciences.
Wiley Online Library This link opens in a new window
Wiley Online Library hosts the world's broadest and deepest multidisciplinary collection of online resources covering life, health and physical sciences, social science, and the humanities. It delivers seamless integrated access to over 6 million articles from over 1500 journals, over 18,000 online books, and hundreds of reference works, laboratory protocols and databases.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Complete is a scholarly, full-text database designed for academic institutions. The database includes full text for 1800 publications as well as images, for nearly every academic field of study.
ArXiv.org This link opens in a new window
arXiv is an e-print service in the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics. The contents of arXiv conform to Cornell University academic standards. arXiv is owned, operated and funded by Cornell University, a private not-for-profit educational institution. arXiv is also partially funded by the National Science Foundation.
Reaxys This link opens in a new window
The world's largest chemical facts databases include structures, physical properties, reactions and literature quotations covering 7.5 million organic and approximately one million inorganic and organometallic compounds. Access to Beilstein/Gemlin in the library is automatic. Just click the link above.
SCOPUS This link opens in a new window
Scopus is an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research literature, with over 19,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers. The focus of this resource is international research support in the fields of science, technology, and medicine. The database does not contain full text for its citations.