LibGuides: Materials Science and Engineering: Literature

Index Databases

To search the technical literature, including journal articles, patents, technical reports, conferences, etc., use an index database. These are the best:

SciFinder This link opens in a new window
Very comprehensive coverage of journals, reviews, and patents in the chemical and materials literature. Personal registration required. See our SciFinder guide for more information.
Updated daily. Requires users to register with a utexas.edu email account. Provides integrated access to the Chemical Abstracts suite of databases with millions of bibliographic records covering the worldwide chemical literature, including patents; as well as over 100 million substance records, with chemical structures, names, synonyms, and associated property data; plus millions of searchable organic reactions. Search by topic, author, chemical identification terms (names, formulas, Registry Numbers), and chemical structures.
Compendex This link opens in a new window
Engineering Index (aka Compendex) has wide coverage of journals and conferences in all engineering fields.
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
Database covering the journal, conference and report literature of physics, electrical and computer engineering, and related fields. Good coverage of electrical-related materials.
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
Wide coverage of journal literature in all fields.
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.
OSTI.GOV This link opens in a new window
Index to DOE-sponsored technical reports (including full text of 450,000), journal articles, conference papers, books, patents, etc. 1940s-current.
Updated regularly. Provides bibliographic and full text access to the Department of Energy (DOE) research and development reports in physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental sciences, energy technologies, engineering, computer and information science, renewable energy, and other topics.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Handy but black-box machine indexing of digital content from journals, reports and patents.
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.

Full Text Sources

This is just a selection of some of the major platforms for journals and other content related to materials science.

AccessEngineering This link opens in a new window
Provides access to hundreds of McGraw Hill handbooks, textbooks and monographs across all engineering fields, a materials properties visualization tool, interactive tables and equations, downloadable spreadsheets, and instructional videos.
Updated regularly. Provides access to hundreds of McGraw Hill handbooks, textbooks and monographs across all engineering fields, a materials properties visualization tool, downloadable spreadsheets, and instructional videos.
American Chemical Society (ACS) Journals This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Provides full text access to journals published by the American Chemical Society.
American Institute of Physics (AIP) Journals This link opens in a new window
Coverage varies.
Provides full-text articles from scholarly journals and conference proceedings published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP). AIP Publishing’s portfolio comprises 19 highly regarded, peer-reviewed journals, including the flagship journals Applied Physics Letters, Journal of Applied Physics, and The Journal of Chemical Physics, in addition to the AIP Conference Proceedings.

arXiv
Major preprint repository including condensed matter physics.

ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Digital Library (Current) This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Provides online access to all available volumes of the technical journals of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the complete set of ASME conference papers starting with 2002, and many older ASME conference papers.
ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) Standards This link opens in a new window
Coverage varies. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly. Provides electronic full-text of current ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) Standards. ASTM standards include test methods, specifications, accepted practice, and accepted terminology for materials, products, systems and services. ASTM standards are used around the world to improve product quality, enhance safety, facilitate market access and trade, and build consumer confidence.

ECS Digital Library
Platform for the electronic journals and proceedings of the Electrochemical Society.

IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window
Papers from IEEE journals and conference proceedings.
Updated daily. Provides full-text access to IEEE and IET (formerly IEE) journal articles and conference proceedings. Also includes IEEE technical standards and conference proceedings from VDE Verlag. Coverage is the research literature of electrical and computer engineering, electronics, computer science, aerospace engineering, biomedical engineering, and transportation. Contains over three million records, with some content back to 1872. Also contains indexing from partner groups.
Institute of Physics (IOP) Electronic Journals This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Provides full text access to the journals published by the Institute of Physics.
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Journals This link opens in a new window
Dates of coverage vary. Unlimited users.
Updated weekly. Provides full text access to the journals published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
SPIE Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Technical papers from SPIE conferences and journals.
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.

E-Books, Books and Printed Materials

Library Catalog

Search in the Library Catalog by keyword to find books on classes of materials, concepts, and techniques. Most recent books are purchased as e-books. Materials science is highly interdisciplinary, so printed books are located across multiple locations in the University Libraries. The Library of Congress Classification System reflects the scattered nature of the subject. These are call number areas related to materials:

QC 176 - Solid state physics / Condensed matter physics
QD 380-388 - Polymer chemistry
QD 878 - Supramolecular chemistry
QD 900-999 - Crystallography
TA 401-409 - General materials science
TA 410-418 - "Special" materials, including composites, nanomaterials. etc.
TA 455 - Materials properties and testing
TA 459-489 - Metals and alloys
TK 7871 - Electronic materials
TN 600-799 - Metallurgy
- TN 690 - Alloy phase diagrams
TP 1087-1190 - Plastics and polymer engineering

Keeping Track

Managing your literature searching and PDF files over the long term is a headache. Consider choosing a reference manager tool to save you time and hassle. Most have free versions but more powerful versions can pay back your investment quickly.

Citation Managers for Research Organization
by Larayne Dallas Last Updated Feb 4, 2025 1624 views this year