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Citation Resources
Finding Sources
Also known as "Scholarly Articles," "Peer-Reviewed Articles," or "Academic Articles," these are:
- written and reviewed by scholars and provide new research, analysis, or information about a specific topic
- usually focused on a narrow subject or a single case study
- intended for an academic audience
Know your types of articles:
- "peer-reviewed" means the article is approved by other experts before publication or presentation
- a "review" article summarizes the field's current understanding of a topic (great for background information!)
- a "preprint" is an early version of an article, usually prior to peer review
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Find Chemistry Articles:
- American Chemical Society Publications This link opens in a new windowACS publications from 1879-present. Click on "All Subjects" to browse, or navigate to a journal and/or paper of interest via the search.
- SciFinder This link opens in a new windowResearch from many scientific disciplines, searchable by keywords, substances, chemical compounds, and more. You must create an account before you can use the database. Available only to Elon students, faculty, and staff.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowIndexes tens of thousands of scholarly journals across all disciplines, as well as conference proceedings, monographs, and more. Pulls data from several different databases, but is traditionally strong in the sciences. Coverage (in Science Citation Index Expanded) starts in 1900 and continues to present day. Previously known as Web of Knowledge.
Books written by experts are a good source of information for many topics. Books in the sciences and engineering often contain:
- exercises and examples
- problem sets
- other practical tools
Use these tools to help learn as you read.
Remember: you may only need to read one chapter of a scholarly book!
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Find Chemistry Books:
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Search Belk Library's online system to find both library materials and articles in our databases. Use the search box below to do a basic search on library materials and databases.
Datasets are collections of data, numeric or textual, arranged in tables. Data and datasets are often used in chemistry work, whether you need:
- detailed data on material properties
- experimental data for a report
- something else entirely; data can be almost anything
Handbooks, like the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, often contain large amounts of data, as well as definitions, techniques, references, and much more.
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Find & Use Handbooks or Data:
- data.govThe US government's open data portal. Search by format, type, or topic. Freely accessible.
- NIST Chemistry WebBookThe National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)'s collection of thermochemical, thermophysical, and ion energetics data.
- Physical Reference Data - NISTData and measurements from NIST's Physical Measurement Laboratory. Includes data on chemical properties, energy, equations, and much more. Freely accessible.