Article databases index and classify articles from scholarly publications, primarily peer-reviewed journals. Different databases cover different ranges of publications, depending on their subject matter and the scope of the database. Databases link through to the Library's e-journals collections for full article access wherever possible.
Journal collections index and classify articles from scholarly publications, primarily peer-reviewed journals. The collection can have a subject specialisation, of just come from the same publisher. They usually have a significant amount of full text content.
The quickest way to find articles on a specific topic is by searching a database.
Otago University subscribes to hundreds of databases, but the ones to the right are a good start for physics students and researchers. Thousands of journals are indexed on these databases, and they contain millions of indexed articles. See the suggested guides under each recommended database, or contact your subject librarian for help.
Databases often give access to full text content, but the amount of full text content available can vary. Other databases just have bibliographic information like the title, author(s), journal of publication (with the volume, issue and page numbers), and year of publication.
You can search for the full text of an article, even if it is not available on the database you are searching, by using the 'Article Link' tool. See the 'Article Link' box below to find out more.
If 'Article Link' does not find a full text version of the article you are after you can still get it through the library's interloans service. See the 'Get It Interloan' box at the bottom of this page for details.