Data Science Orientation: Find Articles

Databases (or article indexes) are online tools to help you find journal articles (along with conference papers and other sources) on a given topic. We have many databases and some index millions of articles, conference papers, patents, media, etc.

• Databases usually provide information about and article (title, authors, where/when published, abstract--or summary) to help you decide if you want to get a copy, but some also include the actual articles. If the article is not full-text in the database, use the  or  button for a link to the full-text article, or an option to request a copy if we don't have it.
• Many of the databases focus on the scholarly, peer-reviewed literature, but some also index popular sources like magazines and newspapers.
• Some databases cover journals from all subjects. Other databases may focus more on science and engineering, or even more narrowly like computer science or chemistry.

Try the Article Databases?

While the UC Library Search is good if you need a few articles, they don't include everything journal and article that you may need for research. The article indexes are better for deeper and more comprehensive searching, and in some cases offer more options to refine and limit searches. A database may cover all disciplines or only cover a subset of disciplines. More databases are listed on the various subject guides. 

Start with UC Library Search?

If you are looking for a few articles, try UC Library Search first, since it indexes articles as well as books. Leave it on the "Articles, Books and More" option rather than changing to "Library Catalog."

Simple 1-2 keyword searches will bring back thousands of results, so you can use the Advanced Search to add more keywords for a more targeted, relevant set of results. You can also use the facets to the left of the results if you want to limit to peer-reviewed articles, or articles that you'll be able to get online. Here's an example.