Physics: Physics Databases

Search articles on physical science, life science, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, economics, marketing, and more.  Many are available in full text format.   This resource is provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) in partnership with the Massachusetts Library System (MLS). The purchase is supported by funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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ASTM Compass is a vast collection of industry-leading standards from ASTM. It covers a broad range of engineering disciplines, including more than 13,000 active ASTM technical Standards, plus historical versions dating back ~23 years, plus red-lined version comparisons between any 2 versions.  

WPI has entered a UNE-EN Pilot Program (from 1-1-2025 until 7-1-2026) for the UNE-EN collection  - which contains 94,000 standards: ENs, and EU (really European Commission) adopted ISOs and EU adopted IECs.  Once the adoption takes place the ISO is now an EN ISO, and the IEC is an EN IEC. The EN ISO document is identical in every way to an ISO, and the EN IEC document is identical in every way to an IEC. The only difference is the EN ISO and EN IEC have the addition of a National foreword/endorsement/cover page. 

[NOTE: Once the Pilot Program ends, WPI may no longer have access to the UNE-EN standards.]
 

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Current edition, includes data on properties of inorganic and organic compounds, values for fundamental physical constants, and tables needed by chemists, physicists, and engineers.

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.

Google search for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports on all topic areas. Use to find articles from academic publishers, professional societies, prepublication repositories and universities.

From Stanford University, includes online versions of 920+ journals in biological, physical, medical, and social sciences.  Many are freely accessible to all.

Search Institute of Physics electronic journals with articles in various scientific, technical and medical disciplines.

The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a digital library portal for researchers in astronomy and physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS maintains three bibliographic databases containing more than 13 million records covering publications in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and the arXiv e-prints. Abstracts and full-text of major astronomy and physics publications are indexed and searchable through the new ADS modern search form as well as a classic search form. A browsable paper form is also available.

Indexes all American Physical Society journals.

Full text access to more than 2000 Elsevier science, social science, engineering and management scholarly journals.

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.

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.

Search the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) Digital Library.

Access to thousands of scholarly science journals and eBooks published by Springer.  ***Full text is available ONLY for WPI subscribed e-books and e-journals, not the full collection.

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.