Research Guides: Mathematics & Statistics: Locating Articles

Intro

Databases

Begin looking for articles on your topic. The electronic databases are the place to start. It is important to develop a search strategy using keywords that you have identified describing your topic. Additional terminology may be found as you use the databases. Remember to distinguish between scholarly and popular articles.

Keywords and Search Strategy

Begin your search using keywords which describe your topic. Connect keywords using "and" to narrow and focus the search statement –both concepts must appear in each article reference. For example: fractal and microstructure.

Abstracts and Subjects/Descriptors

Skim the titles of the articles and then read the abstracts for more detail. If an article looks good, check the subjects, descriptors, or other terms assigned by the database to describe the content of the article. Incorporate some of these terms into your search strategy. Also think of other ways to describe your topic, scientific terms or medical terms (check a science or medical dictionary).

Authors and References

Finally, if an article is on-point, click on the authors’ names for additional articles by them. When you have the full article, review the list of references that the authors provide since some of these article titles might be helpful to you, too. You will then need to check the Journal Locator for availability.

Select Databases

MathSciNet

Offers access to a database of reviews, abstracts and bibliographic information for much of the mathematical sciences literature. Over 100,000 new items are added each year, most of them classified according to the Mathematics Subject Classification.

Science Direct
Indexing and abstracting of more than 1,000 Elsevier Science journals, with approximately half of them full text. Coverage is primarily from the mid- 1990s. Click on the Search button, type in the keywords, and limit Subject as needed.

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Indexing and abstracting of more than 1,000 Elsevier Science journals, with approximately half of them full text. Coverage is primarily from the mid- 1990s. Click on the Search button, type in the keywords, and limit Subject as needed. Select the “PDF” scanned image version since this accommodates graphics. If a “Login” screen appears, the article is not available in the database. An Interlibrary Loan request would then be necessary. When looking for a particular journal article, type the journal title in the box next to Journal/book title. Those journals with a green page at the beginning of the title provide the full articles in the database. Select the journal of interest and the journal volumes available in Science Direct appear, click on the appropriate one and then the issue number. At that point a table of contents appears arranged by page number. Locate the article of interest and click on “PDF” for the article.

To search only the journals that provide full text articles, click on Search and then the gray Journals tab. After entering the keyword terms, limit the Source option to Subscribed journals. Apply other limits as needed.

Scopus

Provides access to peer-reviewed research and conference literature in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Includes topic overviews, experiments, biographies, pictures and illustrations, as well as articles from over 23,500 academic journals, conference papers, trade publications, books, and links to quality web sites. Note: Per our license terms with this publisher, Scopus data may not be used to to train artificial intelligence tools.

AI restriction: you may not "use the Subscribed Products without Elsevier's permission in writing in combination with an artificial intelligence tool except where such artificial intelligence tool is used in a closed hosted environment solely for use by the subscriber.

Scopus

The largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources. Click here to enter Scopus

Go to the Library's homepage and click on All Databases
Scroll down and click on Scopus
Enter keywords
Limit as appropriate: Date Range, Document Type and Subject Areas ("Mathematics")
Click search