Tips for Finding Articles
Articles about this subject can be found in publications from a wide variety of disciplines. Use the databases on this page to get access to thousands of articles examining the subject from different perspectives or browse the key publications shown.
If the full text of an article is not available in a database, click on the 
icon to find other options for getting the article.
A Note on Computer Science Scholarship
Unlike scholars in most of the natural sciences and social sciences, computer scientists do not communicate most of their scholarly findings in journals. They prefer to publish in conference proceedings, the printed version of presentations at academic meetings, conferences, symposia, etc. You can find conference proceedings in BU Libraries Search like any other item in the BU Libraries collections. Some of them are published as single books while others are published periodically as journals are.
The resources listed below will guide you to both journal articles and papers published in conference proceedings.
Core Databases
These resources will help you to find scholarly literature on computer science, often including related disciplines like mathematics and engineering.
- Inspec This link opens in a new window Inspec is a database of research literature in the fields of engineering, physics and computing. It includes journal articles, conference papers and book content. Date coverage: 1896 - present.
- ACM Digital Library This link opens in a new window ACM Digital Library is a database of all materials published by the Association for Computing Machinery, including articles and conference proceedings. Abstracts of books are also provided. Date coverage: Varies by publication
- CiteSeerX CiteSeerX is a library of computer science research with citation data extraction capabilities for use in analysis.
- IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window IEEE Xplore Digital Library includes access to the full text of IEEE content published since 1988 with select content published since 1872 from IEEE journals, transactions, and magazines, IEEE conference proceedings, IET journals and conference proceedings and the IEEE-Wiley eBooks Library including titles from 1974-2015.
- MathSciNet (American Mathematical Society) This link opens in a new window MathSciNet is a database of reviews, abstracts and bibliographic information for the mathematical sciences. Reviews are classified and searchable according to the Mathematics Subject Classification. Continues the publication Mathematical Reviews, first published in 1940. Reviewers are selected by a staff of professional mathematicians to write reviews of current literature. Date coverage: Full text 1940 - present with bibliographic data and some full text for articles back to the early 1800s.
General Science/Engineering Databases
These databases do not focus on computer science or related literature solely, but they are good choices for interdisciplinary research.
- Engineering Village This link opens in a new window Engineering Village is a discovery platform that allows researchers to search across multiple databases (Compendex and Inspec) simultaneously. The platform provides powerful features to refine and filter searches and to sort and format search results and link to full text articles.
- arXiv.org This link opens in a new window arXiv is an open-access electronic archive and distribution server for research articles in physics, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear sciences, quantitative biology and statistics.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window Web of Science is one of the core general science databases covering all aspects of scientific literature. It also has a number of tools that make it a unique resource for finding scholarly literature. Item records come with links both to the works cited by the paper in question and the future works that cite that paper. Web of Science also allows the user to set up email alerts for specific authors or topics, provides researcher profiles, and allows the user to search conference proceedings.
- General Science Full Text This link opens in a new window A multidisciplinary science database designed for students and non-specialists. Subject coverage includes astronomy, biology, botany, chemistry, conservation, health, medicine, oceanography, physics, and zoology. Covers leading journals and magazines, biographical sketches, symposia, conferences, review articles, and special issues of journals. Also covers the New York Times Science Section and cites book reviews. Date coverage: abstracts 1984 - present, selected full text 1995 - present.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new window Google Scholar provides access to academic literature from many disciplines. The sources include articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions and come from diverse places including academic publishers, online repositories and other websites.
