Guides: Science and Engineering Ethics: Research Resources

Resources Available at the Gordon Library

ASCE Library This link opens in a new window
Indexes all American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publications.. WPI has full text access to the ASCE journals only (not conference proceedings).
Coverage: 1970-
Some Full Text: Yes (Journals only)
Compendex (Engineering Village) This link opens in a new window
Electronic version of Engineering Index, covering literature in various engineering disciplines. Comprising journals, conference proceedings, dissertations, standards, books, and recently preprints, Compendex content is sourced from thousands of publishers from around the world, including major engineering societies such as IEEE, ASME, SAE and ACM.
Coverage: 1970-
Full Text: No
Engineering Village This link opens in a new window
Abstracts from the Compendex database, which includes the electronic version of Engineering Index, with links to full text articles, patents, standards and handbooks in scientific, applied science, technical and engineering disciplines. Comprising journals, conference proceedings, dissertations, standards, books, and recently preprints, Compendex content is sourced from thousands of publishers from around the world, including major engineering societies such as IEEE, ASME, SAE and ACM.
Coverage: 1884-
Knovel This link opens in a new window
Collection of critical science and engineering handbooks.(Subscription includes: Biochemistry Biology & Biotechnology; Chemistry & Chemical Engineering; Fire Protection Engineering & Emergency Response; General Engineering & Project Administration; Mechanics & Mechanical Engineering ; ASM International Materials Collection Online).
Coverage: Current
Full Text: Yes
Titles Included
Individual chapters are available to download as PDFs. However, Knovel recommends limiting downloads to 10% or 25 pages of content per title.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. Scopus delivers the most comprehensive overview of the world’s research output in the fields of Science, Technology, Medicine, Social Sciences, and Arts & Humanities. As research becomes increasingly global, interdisciplinary and collaborative, Scopus helps ensure that crucial research from around the world is not missed.
Scitation This link opens in a new window
Search abstracts of 100+ journals from American Institute of Physics (AIP), American Physical Society (APS), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), and science and engineering societies. WPI subscribes to 70+ titles.
Coverage: 1957-
Full Text: Some
Technology Collection This link opens in a new window
The Technology Collection includes the Advanced Technology & Aerospace and Materials Science & Engineering Databases. It combines broad indexing coverage of the scholarly literature in advanced technology, computer science, engineering, materials science and related areas with full-text titles full-text titles from around the world, including scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, and government publications. Coverage: 1962 - current
Wiley Online Library This link opens in a new window
Search journals published by Wiley-Blackwell. WPI subscribes to many titles in various topic areas such as chemistry, medical & life sciences, materials science and engineering.
Coverage: 1996-
Full Text: Yes

Use Browzine to search for journals by title and to browse journals by topic.

In addition, check out the journal 'Science and Engineering Ethics' (screen shot below).

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.

A Climate of Justice: An Ethical Foundation for Environmentalism
This open access book helps readers combine history, politics, and ethics to address the most pressing problem facing the world today: environmental survival. In A Climate of Justice, Marvin Brown connects the environmental crisis to basic questions of economic, social, and racial justice. Brown shows how our current social climate maintains systemic injustices, and he uncovers resources for change through a civic ethics of repair and reciprocity. A must-read for researchers and educators in the area of environmental ethics and those teaching courses in the fields of public policy and environmental sustainability. With the support of more than 30 libraries, the LYRASIS United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Fund has enabled this publication related to SDG13 (Climate Action) to be available fully open access.
A Theory of Bioethics
Intended for students, scholars, and others interested in bioethics, this volume offers a compelling theory of bioethics while eliciting practical implications for issues including medical assistance-in-dying, the right to health care, abortion, animal research, and the definition of death. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Education and Ethics in the Life Sciences
At the start of the twenty-first century, warnings have been raised in some quarters about how – by intent or by mishap – advances in biotechnology and related fields could aid the spread of disease. Science academics, medical organisations, governments, security analysts, and others are among those that have sought to raise concern. Education and Ethics in the Life Sciences examines a variety of attempts to bring greater awareness to security concerns associated with the life sciences. It identifies lessons from practical initiatives across a wide range of national contexts as well as more general reflections about education and ethics. The eighteen contributors bring together perspectives from a diverse range of fields – including politics, virology, sociology, ethics, security studies, microbiology, and medicine – as well as their experiences in universities, think tanks and government.
Science and Technology Governance and Ethics
R & D/Technology Policy; Ethics; Food Science; Nanotechnology; Biotechnology
On the Dual Uses of Science and Ethics
Claims about the transformations enabled by modern science and medicine have been accompanied by an unsettling question in recent years: might the knowledge being produced undermine – rather than further – human and animal well being? On the Dual Uses of Science and Ethics examines the potential for the skills, know-how, information, and techniques associated with modern biology to serve contrasting ends. In recognition of the moral ambiguity of science and technology, each chapter considers steps that might be undertaken to prevent the deliberate spread of disease. Central to achieving this aim is the consideration of what role ethics might serve. To date, the ethical analysis of the themes of this volume has been limited. This book remedies this situation by bringing together contributors from a broad range of backgrounds to address a highly important ethical issue confronting humanity during the 21st century.
Organizational Behavior
This book is not be about giving students all the answers to every situation they may encounter when they start their first job or as they continue up the career ladder. Instead, this book gives students the vocabulary, framework, and critical thinking skills necessary to diagnose situations, ask tough questions, evaluate the answers received, and to act in an effective and ethical manner regardless of situational characteristics. Often, students taking organizational behavior (OB) either do not understand how important knowledge of OB can be to their professional careers, or they do understand and they want to put that knowledge into practice. Organizational Behavior takes a more experiential angle to the material to meet both of those needs. The experiential approach can be incorporated in the classroom primarily through the ”OB Toolbox.“ This feature brings life to the concepts and allows students to not only see how the OB theories unfold, but to practice them, as well.
Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy
This textbook provides an innovative, internationally oriented approach to the teaching of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. Drawing on case studies involving companies and countries around the world, the textbook explores the social, ethical and business dynamics underlying CSR.
Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics
We often make judgments about good and bad, right and wrong. Philosophical ethics is the critical examination of these and other concepts central to how we evaluate our own and each others' behavior and choices. This text examines some of the main threads of discussion on these topics that have developed over the last couple of millennia, mostly within the Western cultural tradition.
A Common Good Approach to Development
This edited collection proposes a common good approach to development theory and practice. Rather than focusing on the outcomes or conditions of development, the contributors concentrate on the quality of development processes, suggesting that a common good dynamic is key in order to trigger development. Resulting from more than three years of research by an international group of over fifty scholars, the volume advocates for a modern understanding of the common good—rather than a theological or metaphysical good—in societies by emphasising the social practice of ‘commoning’ at its core. It suggests that the dynamic equilibrium of common goods in a society should be at the centre of development efforts.
An Introduction to Ethics in Robotics and AI
This open access book introduces the reader to the foundations of AI and ethics. It discusses issues of trust, responsibility, liability, privacy and risk. It focuses on the interaction between people and the AI systems and Robotics they use. Designed to be accessible for a broad audience, reading this book does not require prerequisite technical, legal or philosophical expertise. Throughout, the authors use examples to illustrate the issues at hand and conclude the book with a discussion on the application areas of AI and Robotics, in particular autonomous vehicles, automatic weapon systems and biased algorithms. A list of questions and further readings is also included for students willing to explore the topic further.

American Society of Civil Engineers
ASCE and its members are dedicated to ensuring a sustainable future in which human society has the capacity and opportunity to maintain and improve its quality of life indefinitely, without degrading the quantity, quality or the availability of natural, economic and social resources.
U.S. Green Building Council
Our mission is to transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built, and operated, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy, and prosperous environment that improves the quality of life.
The Athena Sustainable Materials Institute
Check out the Athena Impact Estimator for Buildings is the only free software tool that is designed to evaluate whole buildings and assemblies based on internationally recognized life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology.

Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency®
DSIRE is the most comprehensive source of information on incentives and policies that support renewables and energy efficiency in the United States
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
The Office of Operations is the central organization for all Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) organizational products and services, processes, and systems.
Renewable in Numbers
Renewable in Numbers is a publication formed by a group of professionals in their respective fields who strongly advocate for renewable energy.
DOE Data Explorer - U.S. Department of Energy

Engineering, Social Justice and Peace
A network of activists, academics, and practitioners dedicated to Social Justice and Peace
Engineers Against Poverty
Engineers Against Poverty is an independent, lean organisation that bridges the divide between research, policy and practice.
Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA)
EWB-USA builds a better world through engineering projects that empower communities to meet their basic human needs and equip leaders to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.
Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity is a global nonprofit housing organization working in local communities across all 50 states in the U.S. and in approximately 70 countries. Habitat’s vision is of a world where everyone has a decent place to live.