Science electronic resources: by subject

Owing to licensing restrictions, subscribed resources can only be accessed from British Library workstations within our Reading Rooms.

Freely available resources are indicated as such.

Titles are available in all the Library's London Reading Rooms, except where indicated.

If you do not find the resource you are looking for, see the Library's complete listing of electronic resources.

Online resources

CD-ROMs

Biological and Life Sciences (including food and agriculture)	Health, Medicine & Nursing
Chemistry	Maths, Physics and Computer Science
Energy and Environment	Psychology
Engineering and Technology	Science - General
Geology and Geography	Standards

Health, Medicine & Nursing

Name	Brief Description	Format
AMED 1985 to present	Covers journal articles on allied and alternative health. Subjects covered include: Acupuncture, homeopathy, hypnosis, chiropractic, osteopathy, rehabilitation, herbalism, holistic treatments, Chinese medicine, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, podiatry.
British Nursing Index 1985 to date	Indexes the most popular English language nursing journals published primarily in the UK.
BRITISH PHARMACOPOEIA 2010	Provides information on the appropriate use of medicines in human and veterinary treatment. Resource available on workstation 9 in the Science Reading Room - floor 2.
CINAHL Plus 1937 to present	CINAHL Plus provides indexing for 3,802 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. It also contains searchable cited references for more than 1,270 journals. Full text material includes nearly 80 journals plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials.
COCHRANE LIBRARY	A compilation of evidence about the effects of health care, including the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
CRD databases	A set of three databases which can be searched, individually or together. They are DARE (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness), NHS Economic Evaluation Database, and Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Database. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
Dentist Register	Searchable database of registered dentists and dental care professionals in the UK. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
DRUG INFORMATION - FULLTEXT	Information from the American Hospital Formulary Service and the Handbook of Injectable Drugs.
EMBASE (Excerpta Medica) 1974 to present	A medical database with particularly good coverage of drug literature. The emphasis is on European sources.
Europe PubMed Central	Europe PubMed Central provides a free-to-access online digital archive of full-text, peer-reviewed publications from biomedical and life sciences research. Europe PubMed Central additionally provides access to PubMed abstracts, biological and medical patent records, searchable grant data provided by the funders of the service, as well as link-out to gene, protein and chemical compound databases. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
Global Health 1910 to present	Specialist international public health database which is particularly strong in the areas of tropical medicine, infectious diseases, vector control, food safety and epidemiology.
Health and Psychosocial Instruments 1985 to present	Provides access to information about measuring instruments in the fields of health, psychology, organisational behaviour and library and information science. Covers questionnaires, interview schedules, checklists, coding schemes/manuals, rating scales, projective techniques, vignettes/scenarios and tests.
HMIC Health Management Information Consortium	Comprising of the UK Department of Health Library & Information Services, the Nuffield Institute for Health Information Resource Centre of Leeds University Library, and the King's Fund Library.
Informit Health Collection	Full text databases providing access to core nursing and allied health information from the Australasian region. Content includes research articles, reports and case studies. For help with this resource: see staff at the Asian & African Studies and Science Reference Enquiry desks.
INTERNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICAL ABSTRACTS 1970 to present	Includes clinical and technical drug information, pharmacy practice and pharmaceutical education.
Maternity and Infant Care	A bibliographic database containing abstracts to journal articles on topics such as the midwifery profession, pregnancy, labour, birth, postnatal care, neonatal care, and the first year of an infant's life.
MEDICAL REGISTER	An up-to-date register of qualified doctors in the UK. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
Medicine eBook collection - Springer	A collection of 2,500 eBooks published between 2005 and date covering a range of medical subjects and specialities. Content includes monographs, reference works, encyclopedias and handbooks. For help with this resource: see staff at the Science Reference Enquiry desk.
MEDLINE 1950 to present	Covers journal articles on all aspects of medicine, including dentistry, nursing and veterinary medicine.
NLM gateway	Allows users to search in multiple retrieval systems at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). The current Gateway searches MEDLINE/PubMed, OLDMEDLINE, LOCATORplus, MEDLINEplus, ClinicalTrials.gov, DIRLINE, AIDS Meetings, Health Services Research Meetings, Space Life Sciences Meetings, and HSRProj. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
PubMed	A service of the National Library of Medicine, PubMed provides access to over 12 million MEDLINE citations back to the mid-1960's and additional life science journals. It includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
SPORTDiscus 1830 to present	Contains information on sports medicine, exercise physiology, biomechanics, training techniques, coaching, physical education, physical fitness etc.
TRIP	A Website designed to identify the best evidence for answering clinical questions. The Website draws on many free information resources and makes this content searchable via a single mechanism. This resource is freely available on the Internet. Individuals can register to get enhanced functionality (such as email updates). For help with this resource: see staff at the Science Reference Enquiry desk.

Maths, Physics and Computer Science

Name	Brief Description	Format
ADS - The NASA Astrophysics Data System	A NASA funded abstracting resource covering astronomy, astrophysics, geophysics, etc. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics	Offers convenient access to the entire text of the printed Encyclopedia with continuous updating to the text, periodic additions of new material, extensive links to primary literature and important astronomy websites.
INSPEC (Available through Engineering Village) 1969 to present	Provides bibliographic references with abstracts to worldwide published literature on physics, electronics, electrical engineering, computer science and information technology.

Psychology

Name	Brief Description	Format
PsycEXTRA 1908 to present Help Sheet	A grey literature database relating to psychology, behavioural sciences, and health. Full-text is available for the majority of records (approximately 70% and growing), in addition to a complete abstract record. Coverage consists primarily of material written for professionals but disseminated outside of peer-reviewed journals.
PsycINFO 1887 to present Help Sheet	Includes citations and summaries of journal articles and book chapters in psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines. Approximately 50000 references spanning journals from 1887 and books from 1987.

Science - General

Name	Brief Description	Format
Credo Reference	Credo Reference is an online reference library that provides access to a large number of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and other reference books. Subjects covered include art, biography, history, literature, music, religion, and science and technology.
Current Contents Connect	Current awareness database that provides access to tables of contents, abstracts and bibliographic information from leading scholarly journals, as well information from evaluated websites and documents.
Dissertations & Theses	Index of North American and European doctoral dissertations and master's theses. A large number of the titles are available in full-text. Dissertations published from 1980 forward include 350-word abstracts written by the author. Master's theses published from 1988 forward include 150-word abstracts. Period covered: 1861-.
Journal Citation Reports	Bibliometric tool which allows users to evaluate and measure the impact of scholary journals with statistical information based on citation data. Updated annually. Access to : JCR Science Edition (2003-present); JCR Social Sciences Edition (2005-present).
PASCAL (2001 to present)	Multidisciplinary, bibliographic database which provides coverage of core literature in science, technology & medicine with special emphasis on French & European literature. Several national and international research centres contribute. This resource is only available in British Library Reading Rooms.
SCIENCE.GOV	Science.gov is a gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. Government agencies, including research and development results. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
Scirus	Scirus is a comprehensive science-specific Internet search engine, searching over 450 million science-specific Web pages, Coverage includes scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data such as ArXiv.org, Biomed Central, NASA and Science Direct. This resource is freely available on the Internet.
SCOPUS 1996 to the present	Broad based coverage of scientific, technical, medical and social sciences literature drawn from over 14,000 peer-reviewed journals. Subject areas include Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Engineering, Life and Health Sciences, Social Sciences, Psychology, Economics, General Science, Biological, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Web of Knowledge	Multidisciplinary research platform from Thomson Reuters. Provides access to Web of Science (including the Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index), Current Contents Connect, BIOSIS Citation Index, Zoological Record, Journal of Citation Reports, Derwent Innovations Index. For help with this resource: see staff at the Humanities, Rare Books & Music, Science or Social Sciences Reference Enquiry desks.
Web of Science	Collection of databases providing multidisciplinary literature coverage – including cited references – in the sciences, social sciences and arts & humanities. Provides access to the Science Citation Index Expanded (1900-present), Social Sciences Citation Index (1956-present) and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present). Also provides access to information from the Proceedings Citation Index- Science (2006-present) and Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science & Humanities (2006-present). For help with this resource: see staff at the Humanities, Rare Books & Music, Science or Social Sciences Reference Enquiry desks.
WorldWideScience.org	A global science gateway that enables federated searching of national and international scientific databases. Maintainted by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (part of the US DoE) and a number of other national organisations, including the British Library.

Standards

Name	Brief Description	Format
British Standards Online	Full text access to current, historic, and draft standards produced by the British Standards Institution. Updated daily. NB: This is a view-only subscription – printing is not permitted.
IEEE Xplore	Access to most IEEE and IET journals, magazines & conference proceedings published since 1988, and current IEEE standards. Covers engineering & technology industries, including power & energy, telecommunications & information technology.