I NTERNET G UIDELINES FOR SEARCHING SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE ON THE

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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE

DEPARTMENT OF MATERIALS, TEXTILES AND

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING (EA11)

G UIDELINES FOR SEARCHING SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE ON

THE I ^NTERNET

(Version September 2017)

Author: Prof. dr. ir. Wim VAN PAEPEGEM

Ghent University

Faculty of Engineering and Architecture

Department of Materials, Textiles and Chemical Engineering Technologiepark-Zwijnaarde 903

9052 Zwijnaarde Belgium

Tel. : +32-(0)9/331.04.32 Fax : +32-(0)9/264.58.33

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Chapter 1 1. Introduction

1.1. O

^UTLINE

The aim of this tutorial is to assist students and researchers in searching for scientific literature on the Internet. Most university libraries, and the Ghent University library in particular, have done major efforts to improve the access to electronic catalogues and archives and to offer electronic access to international journals.

Despite these efforts, a lot of students and researchers are not fully aware of the potential of these services, because mastering these skills is not part of the regular education.

Therefore a general overview of the different ways to search for scientific literature will be given in this tutorial.

In Chapter 2, an overview of the most important resources for scientific literature is presented, and for each of these resources, the way of exploring them is explained.

In Chapter 3, some advices are given to stay updated, because a literature study is not a once- only activity, that is done only at the beginning of the research. It should be a continuous effort to keep track of the published literature about the research area you are working in.

Finally, in Chapter 4, some tips and tricks are given for efficiently working with large documents in Microsoft Word. These skills can be useful when writing your Master or PhD thesis.

Not all services that are mentioned in this tutorial, are accessible from outside the Ghent University network (e.g. access to library archives, electronic web-access to international journals). For some services, the IP address of your computer is checked and if it does not match with one of the computers that are registered on the Ghent University network, you do not get access.

If you try to access the Ghent University network with a dial-up connection or a broadband connection from an external internet provider, you need to establish a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection, so that your computer is virtually part of the Ghent University network.

To use VPN, you need to activate your VPN password. You can do that electronically on the website https://password.ugent.be/, but this website is only accessible from the computers that physically are part of the Ghent University network.

Once you have activated your VPN password, you can install a VPN connection on your local computer by following the instructions on the DICT helpdesk website (http://www.helpdesk.ugent.be/vpn/en/). Do not forget to add the VPN server (157.193.46.4) as a trusted server to your firewall (ZoneAlarm personal firewall, Windows XP firewall, Norton firewall,...), otherwise the VPN connection will be refused by your firewall.

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Chapter 2 2. Scientific literature search

2.1. C

LASSIFICATION OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE RESOURCES In the following paragraphs, the different (scientific) literature resources have been subdivided in a number of categories. Some categories contain resources that have first been reviewed and approved by scientific experts, other categories contain information which has been made public on the sole responsibility of the publisher (e.g. websites of industrial companies and newsmagazines). The following categories have been distinguished as sources of (scientific) information:

 Web of Science

 scientific libraries

 Open Archives

 websites of universities and research institutes

 portal websites for scientific information

 websites of scientific societies and associations

 websites of international organizations for standardization

 websites of scientific journals

 websites of government institutions

 websites of insurance companies

 company websites

 patent databases

 websites of newspapers

 search engines

 newsgroups, forums and blogs

Each of these categories is discussed in the subsequent paragraphs.

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2.2. W

^{EB OF}

S

^CIENCE

2.2.1. Introduction

In order to explain where the Web of Science stands for, it is first explained how the scientific output of universities and research institutes is classified. In global, four categories of scientific output are distinguished: (a) articles in national and international journals;

(b) books; (c) conference contributions and patents; (d) dissertations and PhD theses. Each of these four categories is again divided in a number of subcategories, as shown in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1 Classification of scientific output.

a1 international journal papers indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI)

a2 papers in renowned international journals with peer-review process, but not included in (a1)

a3 papers in national journals with peer-review process, but not included in (a1) or (a2) a4 papers not included in (a1), (a2) or (a3)

b1 books (limited to books published by a scientific publisher – no courseware or dissertations)

b2 chapters in books (no conference proceedings)

b3 books as editor (including editor of conference proceedings)

c1 papers in proceedings of scientific conferences (full papers with exclusion of abstracts)

c2 patents

c3 papers in proceedings of scientific conferences (only abstracts) d1 PhD dissertations

d2 Master dissertations

p1 conference papers indexed in the ISI Proceedings

The first subcategory, a1, contains all articles indexed in the so-called Science Citation Index (SCI). This a1 subcategory is internationally considered as the most important category of scientific publications, because it only contains those articles that have been reviewed by international experts and that later on have been published in a renowned international journal. The company Thomson Scientific and Healthcare has developed a database in which all these a1 publications have been included (from 1972 till present) and this commercial database has been given the name Web of Science. The Web of Science database is not allowed to offer the full text of all these articles for download, because the copyright on the full texts is possessed by the publisher of the international journal in which the publication appeared. So the Web of Science database only indexes the bibliographic information of all a1 articles (title, authors, abstract, publication source, etc.).

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In recent years, the number of a1 publications published by the university as a whole and by the researcher as an individual has become a very important parameter for evaluating the performance of the university and its researchers. For the university, this means that its funding by the Flemish government depends to a large extent on the (relative) output of a1 publications compared to other universities. For the individual researcher, the number and quality of his/her a1 publications strongly determines his/her chances for success when applying for research projects and other funding channels.

What are the different steps in the publication process of these a1 articles ?

 first, the researcher or the research team reports the new results in a scientific article. This article is almost always written in the English language, it discusses the research methodology, the obtained results and their relevance to the research community and it compares, if possible, with relevant results that have already been published in the past by other research groups in the same field of interest.

 the authors send the article to the editor of the international journal of their choice. Not any international journal can publish a1 articles, only a selected set of internationally renowned journals is allowed to do so. It is the same company Thomson Scientific & Healthcare that keeps track of these international journals. This database is called Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Only the international journals that are ranked in the Journal Citation Reports database, are allowed to publish a1 articles. This Journal Citation Reports database also contains all details of the international journal:

- the ISSN-number (International Standard Serial Number),

- the publisher of the international journal (Elsevier Science, Blackwell Publishing, Cambridge University Press, IEEE, John Wiley & Sons, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Sage Publications, Springer Verlag,...),

- the impact factor of the international journal. This impact factor is very important and measures the “impact” or “penetration level” of this journal. It is a measure for the frequency by which an “average” article in this journal is cited by other authors during a certain time period (typically one year). So indirectly the impact factor is also a measure for the reputation of the journal and the number of readers in the research community.

Renowned journals such as Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, Science, The Lancet,... have impact factors of 20, 30 and more, while most international journals have impact factors varying from 0.5 till 5. It is easy to imagine that an article with new insights in the treatment of cancer will be read and cited by more researchers than an article describing the style of singing of the nightingale in summer.

In total, about 7 700 international journals from all disciplines (medicine, sciences, psychology,...) are indexed in the Journal Citation Reports.

 next, the submitted article is sent by the editor to a few international experts (the so-called referees or reviewers) who are considered to be an authority in their research domain. They write down their reviewers’ comments and send them back to the editor, who in turn sends these comments to the authors of the article. The reviewers’ comments are always anonymous.

This process is called the peer review process, because the review process is done by peers in the research domain.

 if the verdict of the international experts is favourable, the authors are asked to send their final version to the publisher of the international journal. In most cases the publisher is a professional and commercial company such as Elsevier Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Springer Verlag, etc. Sometimes, the publisher is an academic society, such as

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SEM (Society for Experimental Mechanics), ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) or IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

Once published, the article is indexed in the Web of Science database.

Consulting the databases of Thomson Scientific & Healthcare is not for free. Our university pays a yearly licence fee so that students and researchers have access to these databases. In the next paragraph it is further explained how the Web of Science database can be consulted.

2.2.2. Consulting the Web of Science

As the access to the Web of Science database is not for free, the webserver of Thomson Scientific & Healthcare checks if the IP-address of the client belongs to the university network of UGent. For all computers in the PC rooms and different departments of the faculties, this is no problem, because they are registered as part of the UGent computer network by DICT (Directie Informatie- en Communicatietechnologie). If you want to access the Web of Science from a home computer that has Internet access through another provider (Belgacom, Telenet,...), you must install a Virtual Private Network (VPN), so that your computer is recognized as part of the university network. More details about the installation of VPN can be found on the website of DICT (http://www.helpdesk.ugent.be/vpn/). It is worth to mention that the IP-address of the VPN server (157.193.46.4) should be included in the list of ‘trusted servers’ of your personal firewall (Norton Firewall, ZoneAlarm,...).

Otherwise it will not work.

Then, you are ready to visit the webpage http://isiknowledge.com/, the portal site for all commercial databases that are owned by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare. This web-based platform has been given the collective name ISI Web of Knowledge. The opening screen looks like Figure 2.1. For us, the product Web of Science is the most important and this can be easily accessed through the link "Web of Science Core Collection" in the drop-down menu.

Figure 2.1 Opening screen of the ISI Web of Knowledge.

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If you proceed in this way to the Web of Science database, the welcome screen in Figure 2.2 is opened. At the bottom of the screen, you can find the different databases that are contained in the Web of Science database:

 the “Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) --1955-present” contains all peer-reviewed journal papers that have been published worldwide in the Science Citation Index since 1955. All journal papers that are found in this database correspond to the UGent-category a1 that was mentioned in Table 2.1,

 the “Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (CPCI-S) --1990-present” is a very recent database and indexes all papers that have been published at distinguished conferences. Here again, only certain conferences with a good scientific reputation are allowed to index their papers in this database. All papers in this database correspond to the UGent-category p1 that was mentioned in Table 2.1,

 the other databases contain papers in research areas belonging to social sciences or art and humanities.

Figure 2.2 Welcome screen of Web of Science.

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To search for a1 papers, you can tick off all check boxes, except the first check box for

“Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) --1955-present” as shown in Figure 2.2, because the articles in the other databases do not belong to our target group and would only slow down the searches in the database.

The default search method is “Search” as indicated on the leftmost tab on top of the page.

Now, you can search for the bibliographic information of all a1 publications that have been published in all international journals that are part of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) index from 1955 till present.

The result of such a search in the Web of Science database strongly depends on the quality of the search string that you enter. It is strongly recommended to always make use of wildcards and Boolean operators, with a combination of multiple search terms. Such approach yields far better results than entering one single, very general search term.

Table 2.2 shows an overview of the use of Boolean operators for Web of Science. Table 2.3 shows an overview of the use of wildcards.

Table 2.2 Overview of the use of Boolean operators.

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Table 2.3 Overview of the use of wildcards.

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You can always find the most updated version of these guidelines by clicking the “Help”

button in the Search screen (see Figure 2.2) and then clicking the “Help contents” button in the rightmost corner, as shown in Figure 2.3. The information listed in Table 2.2 and Table 2.3 can be found in the sections “Search operators” and “Wildcards” respectively.

Figure 2.3 Help screen of Web of Science.

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Instead of using the Boolean operators and wildcards in the “Search” interface, you can also choose the “Advanced search” interface, by clicking the “Advanced search” tab in Figure 2.2.

However, as this “Advanced search” interface is not structured very well, it is better to use the Boolean operators and wildcards in the “Search” interface, and that is the way that will be further followed in this document.

In the example of Figure 2.4, we search for all a1 publications that contain the words

“impact”, “damage”, “composite*” and “simulation”. The search string is "impact AND damage AND composite* AND simulation".

The first screen with results is shown in Figure 2.5.

Figure 2.4 Search string “impact AND damage AND composite* AND simulation”.

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Figure 2.5 Results of the search.

The results are listed with first the title of the a1 publication, then the authors, next the international journal in which it was published, the number of citations and finally the “SFX”

symbol. When you click on the title of the a1 publications, you get the full bibliographic information, including the abstract of the article.

The “SFX” symbol is something special. If you click on this link, the software checks if you have access to the full text of the selected publication. How is this possible ? The underlying

“SFX” technology first checks to which institute your computer belongs, in this case the UGent university network. Then it makes connection to the library server of your institute and checks if your institute has an electronic subscription for the international journal in which the selected article was published. If your institute has such an electronic licence, the “SFX”

technology forwards you to the website of the publisher where you can freely download the full text PDF of the selected article.

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The developer of this “SFX” technology is Dr. Herbert Van de Sompel, former head of the automation department of the UGent university library. The idea was born from his PhD research¹ and from February 2000 on, the software is commerically distributed by Ex Libris (http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/SFXFAQ).

If you return to the list of articles that were shown in the search results (see Figure 2.5), you will see that for example the articles published in the journals Composites Part A, Composites Part B, Composite Structures and Composites Science and Technology are all available for download. Indeed, if you click on the “SFX” link for those records, you will see the screen depicted in Figure 2.6. This screen informs you that an electronic version of this article is available at Elsevier. This means that our university pays the subscription for the international journal Composites Science and Technology which is published by Elsevier.

If you click on the “Go” button, you can download the full text PDF version of the selected article.

Unfortunately, it is not always that easy to obtain the full text version of the articles. Suppose that we are looking for articles that describe which type of gripping tabs you should use for compression testing of composites. Search therefore for the keywords “compression AND composite* AND tab*” and restrict the search to the title only. The results are listed in Figure 2.7.

Figure 2.6 Result of the SFX-link.

1 Van de Sompel, H. (2000). Dynamic and context-sensitive linking of scholarly information.

Doctoraatsproefschrift in de Politieke en Sociale Wetenschappen : Communicatiewetenschappen. Universiteit Gent, Februari 2000.

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Figure 2.7 Results of the search “compression AND composite* AND tab*” (title only).

The search only yields five results, and the second and third result are even not relevant, because related to pharmaceutical sciences. If you click on the “SFX” button for the fourth search result, it appears that an electronic version is not available, and the software advises you to search yourself in the UGent university library, as shown in Figure 2.8. This means that Ghent University does not have an electronic subscription for the international journal Polymer Composites.

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Figure 2.8 “SFX” result for the international journal Polymer Composites.

Why is one article available for full text download and another not ? There are various reasons:

 as explained before, Thomson Scientific & Healthcare offers the Web of Science database containing the bibliographic information of all a1 publications published since 1972.

However, the copyright for distributing full text electronic copies of those publications is owned by the publisher of the international journal, not by Thomson Scientific &

Healthcare. So for every single international journal, Ghent University has to pay a licence to the publisher for full text electronic access. If you consider that the electronic subscription for one single international journal of the Journal Citation Reports index can range from 1 250 EUR to 2 500 EUR per year and that about 7 700 international journals are listed in the Journal Citation Reports index, it is for every university financially impossible to have an electronic subscription to all international journals of the Journal Citation Reports index. So Ghent University makes a selection of international journals that are most relevant to its researchers and pays the electronic subscription for these journals,

 this process of electronic subscriptions and full text PDF download is a phenomenon of recent years, thanks to the Internet and advanced server applications. The vast majority of the electronic licences of our university have started from 1998, others from 2000. For most of the international journals where our university has an electronic subscription now, electronic download is not possible for a1 articles published before 1998 or 2000,

 a last possible reason is that Ghent University has an electronic subscription, but that the most recent articles are not available for full text download. Indeed, some publishers give a discount on the licence fee, but under the restriction that the most recently published articles (e.g. from the last year) are not available for full text download.

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Summarized, there are a number of reasons why an a1 article might not be available for full text download. In that case, as suggested by the “SFX” software, you can search in the Ghent University catalogue if a paper version is available for request, or you can request the article from another library. These options will be discussed in the next section 2.3.

The Ghent University library has set up a central website where you can find for which international journals an electronic licence is paid by our university. This webpage is http://elin.ugent.be/. The welcome screen is shown in Figure 2.9.

The most interesting sections are “E-journals” and “E-articles”.

Figure 2.9 Welcome screen of ELIN.

In the section “Browse” you can search for a specific international journal and check if our university has an electronic licence for it. Be very careful with the syntax of the search string, because the search engine is very poor.

For example, wildcards do not work, and you can only search for journal titles, starting with a certain text string. If you enter the search string “composite”, all electronic journals with a title starting with “composite” will be shown (see Figure 2.10).

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Figure 2.10 Search results for “composite” in ELIN.

Table 2.4 lists (in alphabetical order) the international journals for which Ghent University has an electronic subscription and which are most relevant for this course. The right column mentions the year in which the electronic subscription has started.

Table 2.4 List of relevant journals for which Ghent University has an electronic subscription.

Name Year

Composite Structures 1998

Composites Part A 1998

Composites Part B 1998

Composites Science and Technology 1998

Computers & Structures 1998

Engineering Failure Analysis 1998

Engineering Fracture Mechanics 1998

European Journal of Mechanics A – Solids 1999

European Polymer Journal 1998

Fatigue & Fracture of Engineering Materials & Structures 1998

Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 1998

International Journal of Fatigue 1997

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International Journal of Fracture 1999 International Journal of Mechanical Sciences 1999 International Journal of Solids and Structures 1998

Journal of Aerospace Engineering 1995

Journal of Applied Mechanics 2000

Journal of Composites Technology & Research 1998 Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology 2000

Journal of Engineering Mechanics 1995

Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering 2000

Journal of Materials Science 1999

Journal of Materials Science Letters 1999

Journal of Optics A – Pure and applied optics 1999 Journal of Polymer Sc. Part A-Polymer Chemistry 1997 Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites 2000 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials 2000 Materials Science & Engineering R-Reports 1998

Materials Science and Engineering A 1998

Mechanics of Materials 1998

Optics and Lasers in Engineering 1998

Polymer Testing 1998

Progress in Materials Science 1998

The Web of Science database offers the full collection of a1 publications since 1955, independent of the electronic subscriptions that your university or research institute has. If you make a search in this database, you never know beforehand if you will have access to the full text version of the article.

Therefore ELIN offers the search engine “LibHub E-articles” (see Figure 2.9). This search engine limits your query to those international journals where Ghent University has an electronic subscription. In this search engine, the advanced search options are available, as opposed to the limited search options in the section “E-journals”.

Although this method is easier, because you are sure that you can download the full text paper of every listed result, it is not recommended to proceed in this way for three reasons:

 there might exist articles which are very important for your research, but are not in the possession of our university. When searching through ELIN, you will not be aware of their existence, while if you search through Web of Science, you are at least aware of their existence and you can try to request these articles from another library,

 apart from the electronic licenses that are paid by the central library of our university, a lot of department libraries have their own subscriptions to specific international journals.

Indeed, if a specific international journal is so important for the research of that department and the central library does not pay an electronic subscription for that journal, the department can decide to pay the subscription itself. However, these subscriptions are not indexed in the ELIN search engine,

 finally, before 1998, Ghent University also had a lot of subscriptions for international journals, but almost all of them were paper versions. All the older volumes of these international journals are still available in the Ghent University library in the Rozier street, but you cannot search for articles in these older journal volumes through the ELIN website.

Although they are older, those articles can be very important, because they might be written by pioneers in that research field or a lot of recent articles might be based on the

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results published in that old article. Fortunately you can find these articles through the Web of Science database.

In the next paragraph we will discuss which alternatives exist when the full text article is not available for electronic download through the “SFX” technology.

2.2.3. Links

 http://www.helpdesk.ugent.be/vpn/: manual for setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) on the Ghent University network

 http://isiknowledge.com/: portal site for Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports

 http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/sfx_faq.htm: explanation about the SFX-protocol

 http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/SFXFAQ: portal site of the Ghent University library for searching full text electronic articles

 http://www.sciencedirect.com/: portal site of Elsevier Science to search for full text electronic articles published by Elsevier only

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2.3. S

CIENTIFIC LIBRARIES

2.3.1. Introduction

Apart from the electronic subscriptions for international journals, the Ghent University library has of course a lot of other scientific literature in its archives: old printed issues of international journals with a current electronic subscription, printed issues of international journals which are not distributed in electronic form, books, older master theses and doctoral theses, etc.

All these volumes are categorized in the so-called MeerCat catalogue of the Ghent University library. This catalogue has for the moment over 800 000 holdings of books and journals, all in the possession of the UGent central library, faculty libraries or department libraries. The majority of these titles has been bought after 1984. Volumes older than 1984 are registered in a filing card cabinet.

The MeerCat catalogue is accessible through the webpage http://search.ugent.be/ which is shown in Figure 2.11 (or through the library home page http://www.lib.ugent.be/ and selecting “Search collections”). The Dutch interface is of course also available.

Figure 2.11 Welcome screen of the Ghent University MeerCat catalogue.

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If you search for a particular article in the Web of Science database (see previous section 2.2.) and the “SFX” link shows that there is no electronic subscription, then the “SFX” technology will advise you to search for a paper version in the UGent university library.

Suppose that you are looking for the following article in the Web of Science database:

Tsai, S.W. and Wu, E.M. (1971). General theory of strength for anisotropic materials.

Journal of Composite Materials, 5, 58-80.

So the “SFX” software suggests to find out if the paper version is available in the UGent university library.

Figure 2.12 Result of the “SFX” link if there is no electronic version available of the requested article.

If you click on this link, you arrive at the screen shown in Figure 2.13.

If you click on the name of the journal, more detailed information about this journal is listed, as shown in Figure 2.14.

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Figure 2.13 Search results for “Journal of Composite Materials”.

Figure 2.14 Detailed information about “Journal of Composite Materials”.

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The ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) number of the journal is shown, together with the name of the publisher and information about the availability. The line:

UGent-BIB [BIB.P.013860] Holdings: #1(1967) – 35(2001) ONTBREEKT: 11 means the following:

 UGent-BIB is the abbreviation of the library where the journal is available. All UGent libraries (faculty libraries, department libraries, central library) have a unique code. For us, the most important library codes are:

BIB: Central library

T52: Library of Department of Mechanical Construction and Production – Labo Soete (IR04)

T57: Library of Department of Information Technology (IR05) T59: Library of Department of Textile Engineering (IR11)

T70: Library of Department of Mechanical Construction and Production – Mechanics of Materials and Structures (IR04)

TBBS: Library of Faculty of Engineering

The complete list can be found on the UGent library website (http://www.lib.ugent.be/) under the heading “Inlichtingen” / “Information”.

 the Shelf number is the internal holdings number of the particular library where the journal is available. In this case the holdings number is P.013860.

 the Holdings information indicates from which period there has been or there still is a subscription. In this case, the UGent central library BIB has had a subscription from the very first volume of this journal in 1967 till the volume 35 in year 2001. From the next issue on, the university library has changed to an electronic subscription.

The last line of the record information provides a link to the request form, where you can request a particular issue of this Journal of Composite Materials. If you click on this link, the electronic request form of Figure 2.15 is opened.

In this form, you fill in your name, e-mail address, UGent-ID (13-digit barcode on your student card) and the year, volume, issue and page range of the requested journal. You can find all these data in the Web of Science database through the bibliographic information of the article that you were looking for.

After clicking the “Send”-button, your request is sent to the library administration. They will collect the requested volume of the journal from their archives and make it available in the reading room of the central library. Once it is available there, you will receive an e-mail from the library administration that the requested issue of the journal is available for you. This notification message usually follows a few hours after your e-mail request. Then you can go to the central library and take a copy of the article that you were looking for.

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Figure 2.15 Request form for the international journal Journal of Composite Materials.

You can also use MeerCat to check the holdings of a certain journal directly, without going through the SFX-link. If you enter the search string “journal of composite materials” in the search screen of http://www.lib.ugent.be/meercat, you get the results shown in Figure 2.16.

The first result is the paper version of the “Journal of Composite Materials”.

As mentioned above, you can find a lot of interesting journals in the individual department libraries as well (T52, T57, T59, T70,...). The library of the Department of Textile Engineering, T59, deserves special mention, because it owns several important journals in the field of composite materials:

 Fiber

 Journal of Reinforced Plastics and Composites

 Journal of Textile Engineering

 Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials

 Materials Technology

 Polymer Composites

 Textile Research Journal

 Textiles

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Figure 2.16 Result of search for “journal of composite materials” in MeerCat catalogue.

2.3.2. Interlibrary loan request

It is possible that neither an electronic version, nor a paper version of the article that you are looking for, is available in the UGent library. That means that our university has no electronic subscription for the moment and has never had any subscription in the past for that particular international journal. As explained above, it is impossible for every university to subscribe to all international journals due to the high financial cost.

Then, there is yet another possibility, called interlibrary loan request. This means that our university library sends your request to the library of another university where the journal is available. However, our university library will not send out your request to all these university libraries without knowing in which university library the journal is available. Therefore you are expected to investigate yourself in which university library the journal (and the correct

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volume and issue !) is available and then enter an interlibrary loan request on the website of the UGent central library. This request is sent by our library administration to the external library, where the requested article is copied and sent back. This service is not for free and costs about 5.00 EUR per article.

If you need a lot of articles, it is far more cheaper to travel to that library and copy all needed articles over there.

The detailed procedure is as follows:

First you check yourself if the international journal (and the correct volume and issue) is available in another university library. The most common university libraries to check, are:

 the campus library Arenberg (CBA) from the Catholic University of Leuven (KULeuven), where all books and journals from the faculties of Sciences, Engineering, Bio-Engineering and Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences are grouped together

http://www.wbib.kuleuven.be/

 the university library of the Free University of Brussels (VUB) http://www.vub.ac.be/BIBLIO/index_en.html

 the university library of the “Université de Liège” (ULg) http://source.ulg.ac.be/

 the university library of the Technical University of Delft (TUDelft) http://www.library.tudelft.nl/

Once you have found the correct volume and issue of the international journal, you enter an interlibrary loan request on the website of our library. For that purpose, the MeerCat catalogue cannot be used. You need to go to the ALEPH catalogue, another catalogue of the university library, that is available through http://www.lib.ugent.be/aleph. In the welcome screen you select the option “interlibrary request” in the title bar, as shown in Figure 2.17.

In the next screen, your login-ID and password is requested, as shown in Figure 2.18. The login data are your login and password that you received from the DICT for accessing the mail servers and data servers of the university.

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Figure 2.17 Welcome screen of the Ghent University ALEPH catalogue.

Figure 2.18 Login procedure for the catalogue system of the Ghent University library.

After you have logged in, the screen of Figure 2.19 appears. There you can fill in all details of your request.

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Figure 2.19 Electronic form for an interlibrary loan request.

More information can be found on the UGent library website http://www.lib.ugent.be/ under the heading “Inlichtingen”/”Information”. In the FAQ section, you look for IBL (Interbibliothecaire leenaanvraag) or Interlibrary loan request, as shown in Figure 2.20.

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Figure 2.20 Procedure for an interlibrary loan request.

2.3.3. Reprints

If all methods described above do fail, there is one alternative left, and that is asking a reprint from the authors of the publication themselves. In the bibliographic information of the article in the Web of Science database, you will normally find the contact details of the so-called corresponding author. That is the author who takes care of all communication about the article.

You can request a reprint (a printed or electronic copy) of the article from the corresponding author. Although this seems as the most easy method, it should be the last option to try, because of two reasons:

 if every researcher in the world would do his/her literature study in this way, authors of famous articles would receive so many requests that they could never answer them all,

 it is the primary task of the university libraries to make the scientific literature accessible for its researchers, so this is the starting place for literature search.

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2.3.4. Links

2.3.4.a. Belgium

 http://www.lib.ugent.be/: Ghent University library

 http://www.lib.ugent.be/meercat: MeerCat catalogue

 http://www.lib.ugent.be/aleph: ALEPH catalogue

 http://lib1.ugent.be/cmsites/Default.aspx?alias=NL_zoek_Hoe_IBLaanvraag: FAQ about the interlibrary loan request (in Dutch)

 http://www.wbib.kuleuven.be/: campus library Arenberg KULeuven

 http://www.vub.ac.be/BIBLIO/index_en.html: university library VUB

 http://www.kbr.be/start_nl.html: Royal Library of Belgium

 http://source.ulg.ac.be/ : library of the Université de Liège

2.3.4.b. International

 http://www.library.tudelft.nl/: library of the Technical University of Delft (TUDelft)

 http://www.plos.org/: Public Library of Science

 http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/: Scientific Literature Digital Library

 http://www.loc.gov/: Library of Congress (largest library in the world)

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2.4. O

^PEN

A

^RCHIVES

2.4.1. Introduction

Open Archives is an initiative that promotes the free and unlimited, worldwide distribution of scientific information in electronic form, in the first place peer-reviewed international publications (http://www.openarchives.org/). Indeed, during the last few years, there is a growing pressure from the universities and research institutes to make scientific literature available to the large public free of charge. Of course, the commercial publishers are quite reluctant, because they want to maintain the system of paid subscriptions.

The Ghent University library is an enthusiastic defender of the Open Archives Initiative and offers access to so-called open archives repositories on its own website, such as:

 BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/): publisher of 180 peer-reviewed open access journals,

 DOAJ - the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/): this service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. There are now 2807 journals in the directory. Currently 851 journals are searchable at article level,

 Caltech Collection of Open Digital Archives (CODA) (http://library.caltech.edu/digital/):

this repository was launched in 2000 and has grown to include electronic theses, technical reports, books, conference papers, and oral histories from the Caltech archives,

 ...

All these open archives repositories are integrated into the UGent e-sources (ELIN) library (http://elin.ugent.be/), as already shown in Figure 2.9.

To increase its worldwide visibility, Ghent University has decided that the output of its researchers in terms of publications, PhD theses and master theses must be made public as much as possible. Therefore the university library has created its own open archive repository that is called the UGent Academic Bibliography and Institutional Archive. The welcome screen of its website http://biblio.ugent.be/ is shown in Figure 2.21.

In the UGent Academic Bibliography, the bibliographic information (not the full text) is stored of all publications of all UGent researchers, regardless the type of contribution (journal paper, conference paper, book chapter, PhD thesis, etc.). The UGent Bibliography database is very similar in concept to the Web of Science database.

Besides that archive, the UGent Institutional Archive is a repository of full text publications, books, PhD theses and Master theses written by researchers or students of Ghent University.

Unfortunately, this repository is far from complete, because if a paper is published by a commercial publisher (Elsevier, Springer,...), the copyright is transferred from the author to the publisher and the author is not allowed to reproduce his/her article in an open archive.

However, Ghent University has tried to settle agreements on this transfer of copyright with several publishers.

In the search form on the home page (Figure 2.21), you can look up the bibliographic information of all scientific literature that is produced by UGent researchers.

Every researcher who works at Ghent University has the duty to enter his/her publications into the UGent Bibliography through the input module that is only accessible after login as UGent personnel member (login button in the top right corner of Figure 2.21). The interface of this input module is shown in Figure 2.22. This web-based software allows every researcher to add his/her own records to the UGent Academic Bibliography and upload his/her publications into the UGent Institutional Archive.

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Figure 2.21 Welcome screen of the UGent Institutional Archive.

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Figure 2.22 Input module for the UGent Bibliography.

2.4.2. Links

 http://biblio.ugent.be/: UGent Academic Bibliography and Institutional Archive

 http://www.doaj.org/: Directory of Open Access Journals

 http://www.openarchives.org/: Open Archives Initiative

 http://www.sparceurope.org/: The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

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2.5. W

EBSITES OF UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH INSTITUTES

2.5.1. Introduction

Once you have acquainted yourself with your subject of interest, you will gradually learn which universities and research institutes are leading organizations in that research domain.

Then it is possible to consult the website of these universities and research institutes for more information about their current projects and research activities on the particular subject.

A list with the websites of almost all universities in the world is the Braintrack University Index (http://www.braintrack.com/country.htm).

Other interesting research institutes are ESA (European Space Agency), NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), RTO (Research & Technology Organization of the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)), ...

2.5.2. Links

The links below only cover websites that are interesting for this course. This list is not at all exhaustive and the searching techniques described above can be used to discover a lot more interesting websites.

2.5.2.a. Belgium

 http://www.ugent.be/ir/dmse: website of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (IR10) at Ghent University

 http://www.mtm.kuleuven.be/Research/C2/poly/index.htm: CMG (Composite Materials Group) at KULeuven

 http://www.mtm.kuleuven.ac.be/: Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering at KULeuven

 http://wwwtw.vub.ac.be/memc/website/index.htm: Department of Mechanics of Materials and Constructions at the VUB

 http://www.ulg.ac.be/ltas/: Laboratoire de Techniques Aeronautiques et Spatiales (LTAS) at the Université de Liège (ULg)

 http://www.cobo.rma.ac.be/: Civil engineering & materials science Department at the Royal Military Academy

 http://www.wtcb.be/homepage/: WTCB (Wetenschappelijk en Technisch Centrum voor het Bouwbedrijf)

2.5.2.b. Europe

 http://www.cm.ic.ac.uk/: Centre for Composite Materials, Imperial College (London)

 http://www.imperial.ac.uk/aeronautics: Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College (London)

 http://www.ses.soton.ac.uk/projects/Materials/materials.html: Material Research Group, University of Southampton

 http://www.eng.qmul.ac.uk/: Department of Engineering, Queen Mary University of London

 http://www.nlr.nl/public/: National Aerospace Laboratory NLR

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 http://www.npl.co.uk/npl/cmmt/index.html: National Physical Laboratory, Centre for Materials Measurement & Technology

 http://www.lr.tudelft.nl/: Delft Aerospace Engineering

 http://www.risoe.dk/: Risoe National Laboratory

 http://www.sml.lr.tudelft.nl/index.php: Delft Aerospace Structures & Materials Laboratory

 http://bf.rtu.lv/~icas/engl/index.htm: Institute of Materials and Structures (IMS), Riga Technical University

 http://www.pg.gda.pl/~kkrzyszt/Eng/index.html: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Gdansk University of Technology

 http://www.lma.cnrs-mrs.fr/p21.htm: Laboratoire de Mecanique et d'Acoustique (CNRS)

 http://www.iabg.de/index_en.php: IABG: structural tests for Airbus A380

 http://www.tu-harburg.de/index_e.html: Technische Universitat Hamburg-Harburg

 http://www.ivw.uni-kl.de/: IVW: Institut fur Verbundwerkstoffe

 http://www.aero.polimi.it/EN/: Politecnico di Milano

 http://www.ilsb.tuwien.ac.at/: Institut fur Leichtbau and Struktur-Biomechanik (Technische Universitat Wien)

 http://aar.arcs.ac.at/: Austrian Aeronautics Research

 http://www.ifb.uni-stuttgart.de/ : Institut fur Flugzeugbau

 http://www.esa.int/: European Space Agency

2.5.2.c. International

 http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/: NASA information services

 http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ntrs: NASA Technical Reports Server

 http://www.sti.nasa.gov/RECONselect.html: CASITRS, Centre for AeroSpace Information/ Technical Report Server

 http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/ltrs/ltrs.html: Langley Technical Reports Server

 http://stinet.dtic.mil/: Scientific and Technical Information Network (STINET)

 http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/: NASA's Marshall Space Fligth Center

 http://www.wrs.afrl.af.mil/library/tech_rpts.htm: Technical Reports of Wright Research site

 http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/ltrs/: available online NASA published documents at the Langley Research Center, one of the NASA research centres

 http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/: documents from the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), in 1958 turned into NASA

 http://www.nasa.gov/techinfo.html: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Technical Information

 http://www.dtic.mil/: Defense Technical Information Center

 http://www.rta.nato.int/Abstracts.asp: Publications of Research & Technology Organisation (RTO) of NATO

 http://science.nasa.gov/default.htm: Science@NASA

 http://www.nttc.edu/default.asp: National Technology Transfer Center

 http://wwweng.uwyo.edu/mechanical/facilities/compositematerials/30years.html:

University of Wyoming - Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

 http://www.composites.ubc.ca/: Composites group at University of British Columbia

 http://www.esm.vt.edu/: Dept. of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Virginia Polytechnic, Blacksburg

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 http://www.mengr.tamu.edu/: Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University ; J.N. Reddy

 http://www.trl.com/: "Composite Charaterization Center" of Touchstone Research Laboratory Ltd., private company in the USA.

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2.6. P

ORTAL WEBSITES FOR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION

2.6.1. Introduction

Portal sites are often a good starting point for acquiring fast knowledge about the topic of interest. Again the list below covers only websites that are related to this course.

2.6.2. Links

2.6.2.a. Science in general

 http://www.technoport.be/: portal site for Technologisch Vlaanderen

 http://www.research.be/: portal for scientific research in Belgium

2.6.2.b. Materials

 http://www.azom.com/: The A to Z of Materials

 http://www.netcomposites.com/: NetComposites

 http://composite.about.com/: The Composite Guide

 http://www.advmat.com/links.html: The Composites Corner with links to advanced composite websites

 http://www.kunststofnet.nl/: KunststofNET

 http://www.plastics.com/: Plastics.com

 http://www.plasticx.com/a/px0100.html: Plasticx Universe

 http://www.plasti.com/: The World of Plastics

 http://www.matweb.com/: Online Materials Information Resource

 http://dmoz.org/Business/Industrial_Goods_and_Services/Materials/Composites/: Open Business Directory about composites

 http://www.compositn.net/index.htm: COMPOSIT - The future use of composites in transport

 https://www.cstsales.com/home.htm: The Composites Store

 http://www.polymerplace.com/: Polymer place

 http://www.compositesnews.com/: Composites News International

 http://www.performance-materials.net/: Performance Materials Net

 http://www.scientific.net/: Materials Science

 http://www.nanotechweb.org/: Global portal for nanoscience

 http://www.nano.be/: To be Nano (Belgium)

 http://nano.gov/: National Nanotechnology Initiative

 http://www.nanoforum.org/index.php: Nanoforum - European Nanotechnology Gateway

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2.7. W

EBSITES OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES AND ASSOCIATIONS

2.7.1. Introduction

A number of scientific societies have acquired great fame in their field. In the engineering sciences, some of the well-known societies are:

 the American Society for Materials (ASM)

 the American Society for Testing of Materials (ASTM)

 the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM)

 the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE)

 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

A more or less complete list of scientific societies can be found on http://www.osti.gov/eprints/societies.

Most of these leading scientific societies have their own press and regularly publish international journals and books, but also on their website, you can sometimes find a lot of interesting articles.

2.7.2. Links

2.7.2.a. Belgium

 http://www.cfwb.be/arb/home.htm: The Royal Academy of Science, Humanities and Fine Arts of Belgium (Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgie)

 http://www.kvab.be/: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van Belgie voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten

 http://www.flandersdrive.be/ : Flanders Drive (interest group for the Flemish automotive industry)

 http://www.ti.kviv.be/: Technologisch Instituut van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Ingenieursvereniging (KVIV)

 http://www.agoria.be/gen-nl/home-nl.htm: Association of Belgian manufacturers of reinforced plastics / composite materials Reinforplast (Agoria)

2.7.2.b. International

 http://www.asm-intl.org/: American Society for Materials (ASM)

 http://www.awea.org/: American Wind Energy Association

 http://www.iabse.ethz.ch/: IABSE (International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering)

 http://www.rilem.net/: Rilem Publications

 http://www.ewea.org/: European Wind Energy Association

 http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/manu/bladtest.htm: Danish Wind Energy Assocation

 http://roger.ecn.purdue.edu/~asc/: American Society for Composites

 http://www.sme.org/cma/: Composites Manufacturing Association of SME

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 https://www.acmanet.org/: American Composites Manufacturers Association

 http://www.sme.org/: Society of Manufacturing Engineers

 http://www.pultruders.com/: European Pultrusion Technology Association

 http://www.jeccomposites.com/: JEC Composites

 http://www.e-composites.com/: E-composites

 http://www.sampe.org/: SAMPE

 http://www.gprmc.be/: European Composites Industry Association GPRMC

 http://www.sem.org/: Society for Experimental Mechanics

 http://www.polymernetwork.org.uk/: Scottish polymer technology network

 http://www.mat-irl.ie/: Materials Ireland

 http://www.polymers.nl/: Dutch Polymer Institute

 http://www.thinkcomposites.com/: Think Composites Europe

 http://www.autocomposites.org/: Automotive Composites Alliance

 http://www.compositecenter.org/: National Composite Center

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2.8. W

^EBSITES ^OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS FOR STANDARDIZATION

2.8.1. Introduction

In the engineering society, a lot of national, European and international standards exist which apply to design of buildings, mechanical testing of materials, quality management, etc.

Famous standards are:

 ISO = International Standard Organization

 ASTM = American Society for Testing and Materials

 DIN = Deutsche Industrie Norm

 BS = British Standards

 EN = European Norm

 NBN = Norme Belge / Belgische Norm

 AFNOR = Association Française de NORmalisation

Unfortunately, international standards are only available on payment, and most standards are quite expensive. However, the websites of these standardization bodies are very convenient to look up the title and short abstract of certain standards, because most test reports and publications only mention the number of the standard (e.g. “... tensile test on composite materials following the standard ISO 527 ...”), but not the detailed reference of the standard.

2.8.2. Links

 http://www.cenorm.be/catweb/: The European Committee for Standardization

 http://www.bin.be/NL/index.htm: Belgisch Instituut voor Normalisatie

 http://www.astm.org/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/STORE/store.htm?E+mystore: ASTM standards

 http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CatalogueListPage.CatalogueList: ISO standards

 http://www2.din.de/index.php?lang=en: DIN- standards

 http://www.boutique.afnor.fr/boutique.asp: AFNOR- standards

 http://www.ameritech.co.uk/: BSI and ASTM standards

 http://www.dstan.mod.uk/: UK Defence Standardization

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2.9. W

EBSITES OF SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS

2.9.1. Introduction

In general, the websites of scientific journals do not contain that much interesting information that is available free of charge. However, the most renowned international journals such as Nature, Science, The Lancet,... are worth a visit.

2.9.2. Links

2.9.2.a. Science in general

 http://www.nature.com/index.html: Nature

 http://www.sciencemag.org/: Science

 http://www.eosweb.com/: EOS

 http://www.nationalgeographic.com/: National Geographic

 http://www.kviv.be/hetingenieursblad/: “Het Ingenieursblad”, a publication of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Ingenieursvereniging (KVIV)

 http://www.belspo.be/belspo/scienceconnection/index_nl.stm: “Science Connection”, a free publication of the “Federale Dienst voor Wetenschapsbeleid”

2.9.2.b. Materials

 http://mrdec.fpms.ac.be/bsmee/english/ejmee.html: European Journal of Mechanical and Environmental Engineering (E. Dick)

 http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/3/0/4/3/3/index.htt: International Journal of Fatigue

 http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0029-5981/: International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering

 http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/4/0/5/9/0/6/index.htt: Optics and Lasers in Engineering

 http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/3/0/3/9/9/index.htt: Composites Part A:

Applied Science and Engineering

 http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/9/8/4/index.htt: Composites Part B:

Engineering

 http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=8756-758X&site=1: Fatigue and Fracture of Engineering Materials & Structures

 http://www.elsevier-deutschland.de/ijleo: Optik (Urban und Fischer)

 http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/4/0/5/9/2/9/index.htt: Composites Science and Technology

 http://www.asme.org/pubs/amr/index.htm: Applied Mechanics Reviews

 http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/15376494.asp: Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures

 http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0191-5665/contents: Mechanics of Composite Materials

 http://www.jeccomposites.com/publications/jcmhome.html: JEC Composites Magazine

 http://www.materialstoday.com/: Materials Today (free subscription)

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 http://www.reinforcedplastics.com/: Reinforced Plastics

 http://www.acletters.org/: Advanced Composites Letters on-line

 http://www.pubs.asce.org/journals/cc.html: Journal of Composites for Construction

 http://scitation.aip.org/cco/: Journal of Composites for Construction

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2.10. W

EBSITES OF GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS

2.10.1. Introduction

The websites of government institutions are often useful for background information regarding a certain topic, or to find the governing regulations in a specific application field.

In this context, the website of CORDIS (Community Research & Development Information Service) should definitively be mentioned. The CORDIS website is the web portal for all information about finished, ongoing and planned research activities, funding initiatives and innovation projects on the European level. In their database, you can look up information about every research project that has been or is being funded by the European Union. You can find the topic of the project, the allocated budget, the names of all partners, etc.

2.10.2. Links

2.10.2.a. Belgium

 http://awi.vlaanderen.be/: Science and Innovation division of the department of Science, Innovation and Media of the Flemish community

 http://www.belspo.be/belspo/home/port_nl.stm: Federal Science Policy (Belspo)

 http://www.stis.fgov.be/fdwti.htm: Federal Scientific and Technical Information service

 http://www2.vlaanderen.be/IWETO/DOCS/thema_pag.html: IWETO research database of the Flemish community

 http://www.vrwb.vlaanderen.be/index.html: Flemish Council for Science Policy (advising body of the Flemish Community)

 http://www.vlaanderen.be/ned/sites/weten/weten_f.htm: Science and technology in Flanders

2.10.2.b. Europe

 http://www.cordis.lu/: CORDIS database of the European Community

2.10.2.c. International

 http://www.ntsb.gov/default.htm: National Transportation Safety Board

 http://www.faa.gov/: Federal Aviation Administration

 http://av-info.faa.gov/: Aviation Information Website

 http://www.scitech.gov/: Catalog of U.S. Government Science and Technology Web Site Resources

 http://www.ntis.gov/search/index.asp: National Technical Information Service

 http://www.nsf.gov/: National Science Foundation