Physics

This page will help you get more out of your Library resources for your assignments, projects and dissertations in Physics.

Use the University VPN to access to these resources, any time, anywhere.

 

Getting Started

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Options for getting started with Library resources.

Books

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Options for finding book material.

For some assignments, our Discovery Service will give you enough sources to work with.

Sometimes you may want to try specific databases or journals - perhaps your lecturer has recommended particular names as a good way of finding articles. This page lists key sources for Physics:

Check out this video on how to find journal titles.

Check out this introductory video on finding journal articles.

If we don't have an item you're interested in, we may be able to obtain it via Interlibrary Loan or watch this video which explains how.

Google Scholar searches for academic content online. It's a useful additional resource when looking for books, journal articles and other papers.

Some material is available online (often in Institutional Repositories like the University of Portsmouth PURE database), some are not freely available and you may be asked to pay for access to some resources.

However, you can save time and set Scholar to show which results you can access via your University of Portsmouth's library subscriptions:

  • In Scholar, click on the three line icon in the top left corner
  • Select 'Settings' and 'Library Links'.
  • Enter 'Portsmouth' in the search box and select 'University of Portsmouth Library - Full-text@Portsmouth' and Save.
  • Any results available via the University Library will now show a Full-Text@Portsmouth link on the right hand side.

If it's still not available, we may be able to get it via Interlibrary Loan.

Scholar also offers an alerting service, a referencing option and a times cited count.

It has slightly more limited advanced search features (see below).  If you need full Boolean Logic use other databases such as Discovery, IEEEXplore, Science Direct, Business Source Complete or Engineering Village.

Using Google Scholar guide

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Google Scholar also includes an Advanced search feature.  This can be found under the three line icon in the top left corner.

On the Advanced search screen you can find articles in various ways:

'with all of the words' - this is the equivalent to an AND search in a database but you do not need to type AND between your words or phrases.

'with the exact phrase' - this is the equivalent of a phrase search in " " marks in a database but you do not need to type the quotation marks

'with at least one of the words' - this is the equivalent of an OR search in a database but you do not need to type OR between your words or phrases

'without the words' - this is the equivalent of a NOT search in a database (although note that as with a NOT search, it may discard useful results)

You can also limit by where the words occur, author, publisher and/or date.

AND, OR and NOT are explained further in our Library Guide on Boolean Logic but note that Advanced Search on Google Scholar is a limited and you may wish to use Library databases with advanced searches instead.

Referencing

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Support for plagiarism and referencing

Your Subject Team

 Timothy Collinson

Faculty Librarian

email timothy.collinson@port.ac.uk

 Marie Smith

Assistant Faculty Librarian

email Marie.smith@port.ac.uk