Library Guide for Physicists

Scopus offers researchers a quick, easy and comprehensive resource to support their research needs in the scientific, technical, medical and social sciences fields and, more recently, also in the arts and humanities. As of December 2010, Scopus included more than 41 million records (70% with abstracts) from nearly 18,000 titles from 5,000 publishers worldwide. Scopus also offers tools to compare journals, authors, research areas, etc.

In comparison to Web of Science, Scopus has a bigger scope (aprox. 18,000 titles compared to aprox. 12,000 titles), but Web of Science is more complete when it comes to citations prior to 1996. Scopus doesn't use the JIF, but rely on other bibliometric tools such as SJR and SNIP. Another difference is that Scopus covers articles in press.

Scopus is part of Elsevier's SciVerse platform, which also includes ScienceDirect and SciVerse Hub. Through SciVerse Hub it is possible to cross search all ScienceDirect and Scopus content together with Scirus. SciVerse Hub also contains a methods search.

Started in August 1991, arXiv.org (formerly xxx.lanl.gov) is a highly-automated electronic archive and distribution server for research articles. Covered areas include physics, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear sciences, quantitative biology and statistics. arXiv is maintained and operated by the Cornell University Library with guidance from the arXiv Scientific Advisory Board and the arXiv Sustainability Advisory Group, and with the help of numerous subject moderators.

The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a Digital Library portal for researchers in Astronomy and Physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS maintains three bibliographic databases containing more than 8.8 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and arXiv e-prints.

The SPIE Digital Library is the most extensive resource available on optics and photonics, providing unprecedented access to more than 370,000 technical papers from SPIE Journals and Conference Proceedings from 1962 to the present. More than 18,000 new technical papers are added annually.

- The IEEE Xplore digital library is a powerful resource for discovery and access to scientific and technical content published by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and its publishing partners.

- IEEE Xplore provides Web access to almost 3-million full-text documents from some of the world's most highly cited publications in electrical engineering, computer science and electronics.