What is a Database?
Databases give subject access to information found in journals, conference papers, books, reports and other publications. Some databases provide the full text of publications online, others only index journals and provide summaries of the articles.
In many cases you can link to the full text by clicking on the 
button.
A database will provide comprehensive coverage of a subject area, an e-journal collection will only provide access to the publications of an individual publisher.
Databases searches can often be refined to retrieve review articles which provide an overview of research on a particular topic as well as a comprehensive bibliography. Click on the database information icon for more details.
Access: The databases listed here are available to RMIT students and staff on and off campus. (NDS login and password are required for remote access.)
Key Databases for Chemistry
- SciFinder: Chemical Abstracts and Medline
The most accurate and comprehensive index for chemistry and materials science. Coverage includes journal articles and patents, substance data, chemical reactions, chemical regulatory data and chemical suppliers. - Web of Science Web of Science covers over 9000 key journals across all science and engineering disciplines. In addition to keyword and author searching it allows cited reference searching (1900 onwards) which is useful for finding related articles.
- Scopus Multidisciplinary database. Coverage includes over 14 000 peer reviewed journals in the physical, life and health sciences. Cited reference searching from 1996.
- Ei Village Ei Village hosts the Compendex database, the main indexing and abstracting service for engineering (inc. chemical, environmental and food engineering). Geobase (ecology, geophysics and geology) can be searched at the same time and duplicates removed.
- ANSTI: Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Information (Informit) Compiled by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, ANSTI covers journal articles, books, conference papers, theses etc authored by Australians or published in Australia.
- CSA Illumina Potentially relevant databases include Polymer Library, CSA Materials Research Database and Toxline. Within CSA click on Select Databases.
- Science Journals (Proquest) General coverage of all aspects of science and technology.
e-Journal Collections
- ACS (American Chemical Society) journals 29 full text journals from the American Chemical Society
- RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry) journals Access to over 20 journals and other periodicals published by the RSC
- ScienceDirect Full text access to more than 1,800 journals produced by Elsevier, a major scientific publisher
Suggested Journals and e-Journals
- Analytical chemistry
- Angewandte Chemie
- Beilstein journal of organic chemistry
- Biomacromolecules
- Biomicrofluidics
- Chemistry in Australia
- Chemistry of materials
- Electrophoresis
- Environmental pollution
- eXPRESS polymer letters
- Fuel
- Green chemistry
- Journal of chromatographic science
- Journal of chromatography A
- Journal of chromatography B
- Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry
- Journal of the electrochemical society
- Nature
- Nature chemistry
- Nature materials
- Organic letters
- Rapid communications in mass spectrometry : RCM
- Science
- Surface science reports
- Water, air and soil pollution
Keeping Up To Date
Many databases allow you to register and then set up a "journal alert" function which will email the latest contents pages of specified journals to you. It is also possible to set up a "search alert" so that a particular search is run on a regular basis and the results emailed to you. Look out for links to "Alerts" or "My Profile" on database / e-journal collection welcome pages.
Tip: Alerts in Web of Science
To set up journal alerts, select My Journal List from the drop down box at the top of the page. To set up a search alert, do your search then select Search History, then Save History.
For more information go to our Staying current With your research page
Locating Journals
To locate a particular journal or e-journal - use the Library catalogue.
If you see the button in the catalogue record, click on it to link to an electronic version of the title.
Help is available on how to make the most of our catalogue
If the journal is not held at RMIT - we can deliver an electronic copy of an article to your desktop. Document Delivery Services provide access to resources not held in RMIT Library collections, cross campus copies and a postal loans service to remote and external students.
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