REU Program Guide: Research Guides & Tutorials

This Guide is for students participating in summer REU programs to assist them with interdisciplinary research projects

Interdisciplinary Research

This guide was designed as a supplementary resource for REU Summer Program Attendees to re-visit throughout their program. You will find helpful information regarding the topics we covered in our library session surrounding, research, citation, and literature review.

Databases and Related Discplines

Here are links/a list of all databases from our session and which disciplines they cover:

General Science Resources:
- Google Scholar and Web of Science
Agricultural and Environmental Science:
- Environmental Science and Management/Biology
BioOne:
- Biology
Compendex:
- Engineering and Applied science
  - Inspec and Compendex are under the “Engineering Village” platform from Elsevier and have similar interfaces
IEEE Explore:
- Engineering-Standards and Conference Proceedings.
Inspec:
- Physics, Engineering, Computer Science
SciFinder:
- Chemistry
  - Must create your own account in order to access!
TRID (Transportation Board Research Database):
- Urban Studies and Planning
Urban Studies and Abstracts:
- Urban Studies and Planning
Web of Science:
- Biology and Geography

Agricultural & Environmental Science Provides citations, abstracts and full text of articles in agriculture, aquaculture, environmental, ecology, food and human nutrition, and water resources journals, conference proceedings, EPA reports, and books.
BioOne Contains full text articles from bioscience research journals focused on biology and environmental science.
Compendex (Historical) Historical access to citations and abstracts for engineering and the applied sciences from 1884-1969.
IEEE Xplore Indexes full text IEEE and IET journals, conference proceedings, and standards.
Inspec Indexes records of international scientific and technical articles in the fields of computer science, electrical engineering, and physics.
SciFinder Maintains citations and abstracts of chemistry and chemical engineering literature. Access limited to current PSU students, faculty, and staff. Sign up with a PSU email address and receive a confirmation email before accessing SciFinder. Chrome recommended. Create your account
TRID (Transportation Research Board database) Provides international transportation research. TRID combines records from TRB's Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS) database and the OECD's Joint Transport Research Centre's International Transport Research Documentation (ITRD) database. Covers the 1960's to the present.
- This link opens in a new window
Urban Studies Abstracts Provides indexing and abstracts for urban affairs, community development, and urban history. 
Web of Science Maintains citation searching for high impact research journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and sciences and includes emerging sources citation indexing from 2005.