LibGuides: Electrical and Computer Engineering: Research Papers, News Updates, and Journals

Find Articles & Journals

Here is a list of recommended databases for electrical and computer engineering. 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 choose:

Inspec is the special index for electric and computer engineering.
Compendex offers the broadest search of the research literature of engineering.
Academic Search Complete is one of our favorite indexing products. It has good coverage of engineering topics and also of related fields. It is important to know that conference papers are not indexed.
If you are designing medical devices, be sure and consider using MEDLINE/PubMed and Embase.

IEEE Xplore is not a subject index for electrical and computer engineering; that is, it doesn't index across a wide range of publishers. It is the database of the IEEE, with additional material from some other publishers.

INSPEC
abstracts to worldwide literature of physics, electronics and electrical engineering, computing and control, and information technology
Compendex
a comprehensive database of scientific and technical engineering research, covering all engineering disciplines.
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Digital Library
Be sure to use the "ACM Guide to Computing Literature." This indexes publications from sources besides the ACM. This is the main index to the research literature of computer science.
ABI/INFORM Global
Indexes the business literature. With the ProQuest interface.
Business Source Complete
Ebsco's index to the research and popular literature of business. Lots of full-text.
Academic Search Complete
Indexes journal articles, magazines, and major newspapers across academic disciplines. One of our favorites. Lots of full-text. Does not index conference papers.
MEDLINE (EBSCO)
Also known as "PubMed" in a slightly different version. Indexes the medical literature --- often important to mechanical engineers. We have the database in multiple versions. "PubMed" has the freely available interface.
Embase
Indexes the research literature of medicine. Overlaps with Medline/PubMed and also includes additional European and pharmaceutical literature.
Web of Science
Broad coverage of the research literature in science and technology.

For News Coverage

Factiva
A news database, especially important for providing the text of newspaper articles and news announcements.
Nexis Uni
A full-text news database, with the text of newspaper articles and other news sources. Also, important for legal content.

Collections of Papers from Societies

These databases are valuable sources and are satisfying for their full-text content but be aware that each indexes publications from one society. You will also want to search using an indexing tool with more comprehensive coverage:

IEEE Xplore
Also significant content from the IET.
SAE Mobilus
Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Providing resources on technologies related to the automotive, aerospace, and commercial vehicle industries.
SPIE Digital Library
Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Includes more than 350,000 technical papers. These papers were published either in the SPIE Proceedings series or in one of the nine SPIE journals. SPIE journals and proceedings are core information resources for the subject areas of optics, photonics and imaging.

If you don't see a PDF or HTML link, connecting you to the full article, click the button to see if the article is available in another database or in print in one of the UT Libraries.

If it's only available in print or you can't see how to otherwise get a copy, go to and complete a request form.

Find Journals

To see if we have a particular journal (i.e. Nature, ENR), either in print or electronic format, use the find a journal link.
You can also browse our ejournals by subject area.

Journal Collections

Engineering Societies: see the print and full text holding for more than a dozen key engineering societies such as AIAA, ASCE, ASME, IEEE, SAE, SPE, SPIE and more!