Chemistry Resources
What is a Journal Article?
What is a journal article?
Most of what you retrieve from our databases are journal articles. Journal articles are primarily written by scholars to communicate and share knowledge with the scientific community. Journal articles are appropriate to use when you want to cite information that comes from the experts.
There are several types of journal articles in the sciences:
- Original research articles share the results of experimental studies as well as their broader implications.
- Short reports or letters are sometimes published in advance of a full original research article in order to communicate interesting or time-sensitive preliminary data.
- Literature reviews are intended to provide a comprehensive synthesis of the known information on a topic.
- Case studies share specific experiences the authors had trying out new ideas or exploring new phenomena.
- Methodologies, Methods, and Protocols offer new ways to perform procedures, tests and assessments, or experiments.
Original research articles and literature reviews are probably the most common articles you will find. Which types of articles you use will depend on the type of information you are looking for. It may be appropriate to cite more than one article type in your own work.
Core Chemistry Databases
The following databases are standard resources for all things chemistry, including research articles, patents, reactions, chemical substance information, and more.
- SciFinder-n This link opens in a new windowSciFinder is the most comprehensive chemistry database. It includes journal articles, patents, principles, reactions, substances, properties, and more.
- Reaxys This link opens in a new windowReaxys is a web-based search and retrieval system for chemical compounds, bibliographic data and chemical reactions. The database originally combined data from the Handbook of Organic Chemistry, the Gmelin Handbook of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry, and the Patent Chemistry Database and is now updated directly from the source literature.
- ACS Publications This link opens in a new windowChemistry database that searches articles from journals published by the American Chemical Society. Articles are full-text and cover all areas of chemistry. 1879-present.
- Inorganic Crystal Structure Database This link opens in a new windowCollection of crystal structure data of inorganic compounds recorded in the literature of the field from 1913 to present.
Cited Reference Searching
Web of Science and Scopus are multidisciplinary article databases that allow you to navigate forward and backward through cited literature so that you can follow the train of scholarly conversation on a topic.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowWeb of Science is a multidisciplinary database of high-impact journal articles. Navigate forward and backward through literature with cited reference searching.
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowScopus is a good starting point for finding articles on almost any topic and is an excellent database for cited reference searching. It does not contain full text articles, but users can link to full text by using the Get It button.
Interdisciplinary Research
The following databases may be especially useful for chemistry research that may be interdisciplinary in nature. You may also be interested in exporing the resources on the following guides: Medicine, Pharmacy, Chemical Engineering
- Nature.com This link opens in a new windowNature publishes research from all fields of science and technology on a weekly basis.
- Science This link opens in a new windowScience magazine is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowThis multidisciplinary index of Elsevier publications is especially strong in topics related to the sciences, medicine, and technology.
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