University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma
For some assignments, you may be asked to use journal articles or other peer-reviewed material. These articles are written by scholars, and each is reviewed by other scholars before it is published to ensure it meets academic standards for the field. Many journals are published online, and most of Nash Library's journal collections are online only. You may find articles by browsing through specific journal titles or by searching through many journals at once using a database.
If you are connected to the internet on-campus, you are already logged in to all of Nash Library's online databases and journals. If you are off-campus, you will have to log in using your USAO credentials.
Databases allow you to search within a vast number of publications to find journal articles and other sources, including books, book chapters, conference proceedings, and dissertations. Because these databases are only accessible via subscription, you will find articles and other materials that you could not find using a simple Google search. To see a list of all databases, click on Databases in the light green ribbon at the top of the screen.
The following are databases particularly useful for finding articles on physics topics:
Pre-Prints are papers written by academic authors that have not yet been peer reviewed. Authors submit papers to pre-print databases in order to share a free version of the paper. Typically, the article will later be published, after it has been peer-reviewed, in an academic journal. These technically aren't journal articles; they are papers on their way to being journal articles.
Because the liberal arts are interdisciplinary, there are many different journals on different subjects that could contain articles relevant to your research topic. This is a short list of some journals that focus on physics.
To find more journals on a subject, click Journals at the top of this page; then, in the "Browse by Discipline" box, click the subject you want to study.
Databases include records for thousands of articles, including ones to which Nash Library does not have access. However, you can get these articles through interlibrary loan.
When you find an article you like, look for an interlibrary loan link. It will take you to the Nash Library Interlibrary Loan Form, which you can then fill out and submit. Nash Library will contact a library which has access to the journal, and that library will send Nash a copy.
