How do I find articles on a particular topic?
Step 1. Choose your Database
The first step is to select the appropriate database for your topic. There are
many to choose from, but in chemistry
Chemical Abstracts is king. It comes in two forms:
SciFinder and
Chemical Abstracts - Student Edition.
 SciFinder |
 Chemical Abstracts - Student Edition
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SciFinder is a comprehensive tool covering the literature back to 1907 and before, used primarily by researchers and advanced students. Caveats: It requires advance personal registration, and access is limited and it may be hard to get in at certain times. Retrieval on simple searches may be overwhelming, since CAS indexes many thousands of publications and millions of patents in over 50 languages. Many of these are not readily available to UT users.
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CA Student Edition is a much smaller database, going back to 1967 and covering about 300 major chemistry and biomedical journals in English. It's ideal for students who are just learning their way around the chemical literature, and the UT Libraries subscribe to almost all the journals indexed, most of them online.
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Other databases that chemists sometimes use include
Medline or PubMed for biomedical topics, and
Web of Science for general science and engineering topics.
