EGIS (Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society): Journal Articles

Discovery searches across many of the Library's databases, full-text collections and book catalogue.  You can enter search terms/keywords in the search box below:

or, for advanced searching, go to:

Remember:

• Discovery can be a useful starting point for research, and is THE resource if you want to check if something is part of our collections.
• If you are off-campus, you should sign-in with your Heriot-Watt username (in the format abc123) and password to make sure you get the full list of results.
• It does not search all Heriot-Watt resources, therefore you may need to use resources in addition to Discovery.

Literature searching for your dissertation/thesis:

• By default, the search results are set to show only those we have full-text access to.  If you want to find the most relevant results, you should select the 'search outside Heriot-Watt' option.
• If you are conducting a more systematic or advanced literature search, you should take advantage of the features of our more specialist databases.

See also:

For help with literature searching see:

The Royal Society of Chemistry have written a short PDF guide to reading journal articles, covering their structure and content, peer review, and reading critically.  The guide is aimed at undergraduate students: you will find it useful if you are new to using journal articles in your studies.

Note: although written by RSC, this is a useful overview for all subject areas.

You access Heriot-Watt subscription databases with your Heriot-Watt username/password.  You can also register with these resources to set up a personal account.  Once registered you can save your searches and set up the following types of alert:

• Table of Contents (TOCS) Alerts
  • TOCs from newly published journal issues
• Search / author alerts
  • New articles and other sources that match your search criteria
• Citation alerts
  • When a journal article or conference paper references a paper you have specified as being of interest

Should you require advice on this, please get in touch.

When off-campus, you will be prompted for your Heriot-Watt username/password.  For help with usernames/passwords, see:

Orkney / IDL / HWOL

You can use the Inter-Library Loan request service to request articles that are available in print in our campus libraries.

Discovery will probably be sufficient to help you find some literature for your coursework assignments.  However, if you wish to do a more advanced or systematic literature search (e.g. for dissertation, thesis or research), then there are better resources for this than Discovery.

We provide access to two of the biggest abstracting and indexing databases: Scopus and Web of Science.  These allow you to cross search multiple publishers and have useful advanced searching and alert features.  If you are doing a systematic review, it is very likely you will want to use these databases.

We also provide access to a large platform called ProQuest, which can be really useful if you are likely to want to find grey literature (literature not published in journal or conference proceedings).  When searching ProQuest, you are searching lots of smaller databases.  If you are doing a systematic review, you will likely want your search to be replicable, so may need to search the individual databases, rather than the whole platform - please get in touch for further information.

Links to these resources are given below:

Below are lists of EGIS resources by subject, to help you find journal articles, but also other types of information.

The key resources have 'Best Bets!' listed at the top.  These are are our two largest abstracting and indexing databases (Scopus and Web of Science) and our two largest platforms (Discovery and ProQuest), plus other recommendations for your subject area.

Note: the 'best bets' for you will be dependent on your area of research - take a look at the full list, or get in touch if you have any questions.

**these lists are currently being updated and may not yet have all the relevant resources listed **

Please get in touch if you have any questions/need advice on resources.