LibGuides: BME Capstone 370 & 371: Searching for BME Research Papers

We Recommend Using Library Databases

Here is a list of databases to help with finding information about biomedical engineering research. Coverage varies by product but most help you find research papers --- including journal articles and conference papers --- on topics of interest. See more products at the big list of Databases, where you may search by subject, type, and provider.

Which to select?

Academic Search Complete indexes articles from engineering journals and very few conference papers or preprints. The interdisciplinary coverage is good for engineering subjects.
Compendex is the special index --- across engineering disciplines --- of the journal and conference literature of engineering.
Inspec has a reputation for having good coverage of European publications. It is the special index for the literature of physics and for electrical and computer engineering. It is good for biomedical research.
The PubMed/Medline family of indexes covers the literature of medicine. PubMed is difficult to use but is freely available. It has some additional content compared with the Medline family of databases (Medline products will always have a better interface).
ABI/Inform is our business librarian's recommendation over Business Source Complete (also a good choice). Engineering topics are business topics.
It depends. You may be working on a user interface for a medical device. There are special indexing products for the psychological literature, and for other subjects, too.
Google Scholar is easy to find but we have better and more sophisticated databases through the Libraries; the cited-by feature is good. If you use the product, use it through the Libraries link or adjust the settings to take advantage of UT subscriptions.

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Good engineering coverage and good coverage of most topics of interest for college work. Focuses on journal and magazine articles. Lots of full text.
Updated daily. A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database, with more than 5,300 full text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. Offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
Features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for 1,000 journals.
Compendex This link opens in a new window
The most comprehensive index of the research literature of engineering -- we expect it to cover all engineering disciplines. Includes indexing of journal articles, conference papers, and pre-prints. May be searched together with Inspec.
Updated weekly. Ei Compendex indexes the research literature of the field of engineering. The product contains more than 17 million total records. Over a million new records, with abstracts, are added per year. More than 3,600 journals and 4,100 conference publications and trade magazines are currently indexed. Customizable e-mail or RSS alerts are available.
INSPEC This link opens in a new window
The special index for the research literature of physics, electrical & computer engineering, and control. May be searched together with Compendex.
Updated weekly. Indexes the research literature of physics; electrical engineering and electronics; & computers and control. Offers over 15 million records and strong international coverage. The archive portion, which was formerly separate, is now integrated with the current file.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Our strongest index for the research literature of biology. It is multidisciplinary and includes engineering coverage. The special feature is "Cited References." Includes valuable author profiles.
Updated weekly. The Web of Science Core Collection is a group of databases (Science Citation Index Expanded, 1900-present; Social Sciences Citation Index, 1900-present; Arts & Humanities Citation Index, 1975-present) that together cover more than 21,000 journals across all disciplines. The Emerging Sources Citation Index (2005-present) tracks thousands of additional journals that are being considered for inclusion in the main citation indexes. Other files track references from conference proceedings (1990-present) and citations to books (2005-present).
The Web of Science platform currently also provides temporary access to several databases that are not part of the Core Collection, including Biosis Citation Index, Data Citation Index, and Zoological Record.
ABI/INFORM Global This link opens in a new window
Recommended by the UT business librarian as the preferred index to the literature of business and business research. Also includes coverage of popular materials.
Updated daily. In-depth coverage of business issues, management techniques, competitive information, and a variety of other topics.
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Another good index to the business literature. This one has the Ebsco interface.
Updated monthly. A scholarly business database providing a collection of bibliographic and full text content in all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics. Indexing and abstracts for scholarly business journals back to 1886 are included.

Searchable cited references provided for more than 1,200 journals. Contains detailed author profiles for the 20,000 most-cited authors in the database.

Additional full text, non-journal content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, and SWOT analyses.
Embase This link opens in a new window
Index to the research literature of medicine, with a European base. Complementary to Medline/PubMed. Be sure to notice that the search interface is special to this product.
Embase provides coverage of the biomedical literature, with over 31 million records from over 8,500 currently published journals, including over 7 million records and more than 3,000 journals that are not covered by MEDLINE. Offers extensive coverage of searchable conference abstracts dating back to 2009. It currently indexes over 6,000 conferences covering ~350,000 conference abstracts each year. Embase uses Emtree, the Elsevier Life Science thesaurus: a hierarchically structured, controlled vocabulary for biomedicine and the related life sciences. It includes a range of terms for drugs, diseases, medical devices and essential life science concepts

Members of the PubMed/Medline family of databases. PubMed indexing includes some additional items. The Medline databases (we have several versions) have more familiar interfaces. No matter the name, the products index the research literature of medicine.

PubMed This link opens in a new window
1950 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Provides access to over 36 million citations in MEDLINE, PreMEDLINE, and other related databases. Links to the full text articles are provided when available, subject to UT subscription status.

Set up LibKey Nomad to find access through the UT Libraries subscriptions and purchases.
MEDLINE (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
1950 - present. Unlimited users.
Updated monthly. Provides bibliographic indexing from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. Contains bibliographic citations (e.g., authors, title, and journal reference) and author abstracts from 4,500 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 foreign countries.
Journal articles are indexed for MEDLINE using NLM's controlled vocabulary, MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). Citations are created by the National Library of Medicine, International MEDLARS partners, and cooperating professional organizations.
MEDLINE has worldwide coverage, but 88% of the citations in current MEDLINE are to English-language sources and 76% have English abstracts.
NLM provides free access to MEDLINE through PubMed.

Google Scholar with UT Library access set:

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Google Scholar uses the popular Google search engine to enable searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Google Scholar includes full text and citations.
Use this link to access Google Scholar, and see our Google Scholar Guide for information on using this resource.
If you encounter a warning about the security certificate when using the FindIt@UT tool in Google Scholar, you can learn more about that using this guide.

"Find it at UT"

Click on "Find it at UT" (or on an icon with similar text) to link to the electronic text of a journal article. Sometimes, the linking won't work out and you should see information about how to obtain a copy of the material.

Get a Scan

To request a copy of a paper you don't find, go to the Get a Scan form.