All Guides: Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science: Finding Articles

Using Databases

As a student, staff, or faculty member at Macalester, you have access to a wide range of databases. Searching databases can help you to find articles written by expert researchers, specialized resources, and other sources that may or may not be available through a Google search.

For additional research support, reach out to your subject librarian.

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General Science Databases

These databases can also be a great place to start, as they are multidisciplinary, but more focused on the sciences. These can be a great source as you start to look for more specialized research, but can also include some broader perspectives.

Scopus

An abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature with tools to track, analyze, and visualize research.
ScienceDirect
Database of research covering 4 main areas: Physical Sciences and Engineering, Life Sciences, Health Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities. Article abstracts are freely available, but access to full text requires a subscription or pay-per-view purchase.
Public Library of Science (PLOS)
Original published reports and research in the life sciences and medicine.

Multidisciplinary Databases

Multidisciplinary databases allow you to search for information on a topic across subject areas. This is often a great way to get started searching for articles or exploring your topic, as the results are not restricted to highly specialized sources.

Academic Search Premier
Interdisciplinary resource with popular, scholarly, and peer-reviewed articles and citations. Includes speeches, newspapers, and polls.
Google Scholar

Search across a wide range of scholarly literature from around the world. This custom link for Google Scholar includes the Macalester Library code and will display a "MACLINKS FULL TEXT" link next to resources available from Macalester Library. You will also see MACLINKS if you are logged in to the on-campus network. If you are off campus and don't use the above custom link, you can configure Google Scholar to display MACLINKS by customizing your library links settings.
JSTOR

Large collection of scholarly journals and books from all disciplines, with stronger coverage for the humanities and social sciences. Current issues from journals (the most recent 3-5 years) are generally not available in JSTOR.