Research Guides: Electrical and Computer Engineering: Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographies & Bibliographic Tools for CS Research

Computing Reviews (ACM) This link opens in a new window
Computing Reviews compiles expert, unbiased critical reviews of current publications of note in computing--including books as well as journal and conference papers. The goals of CR are to provide an overview of developments in computing to both specialists and generalists who wish to survey the field as a whole; isolate and illuminate quality materials; and build and enhance communities of computer scientists and others by promoting the exchange of ideas.
Engineering Village (Formerly Compendex) This link opens in a new window
Engineering Village is a specialized discovery platform where researchers can effectively search multiple engineering databases all in one place.

Google Scholar
Google Scholar, Google's scholarly publication search engine, displays records for over 2 million documents in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Google Scholar is effectively a search engine or bibliographic tool. It crawls the web, including academic publishing databases, looking for scholarly content containing the user's search terms. Google Scholar is an excellent resource for "known-item" searches, i.e. for gaining access to concrete publications for which you have some basic information such as author name, title, publication venue, etc. Be aware that Google Scholar's search interface is not as sophisticated and nimble as those of many other academic databases. It is not, therefore, the most useful tool for exploratory searching.

ingentaconnect Complete This link opens in a new window
Offers federated searching of more than 50 Electrical and Electronic Engineering periodicals from mainstream publishers such as Wiley, Elsevier, Springer and Taylor & Francis.

The system allows users to register and sign up for e-mail alerts for new issues of periodicals and new publications in a given subject. Primarily a bibliographic tool, in the overwhelming majority of cases Ingenta Connect Complete provides only citations and not full-text access to articles. The NYU library site provides full-text access to Wiley, Elsevier and Springer publications through the databases maintained by these publishers. NYU affiliates can get full-text access to Taylor & Francis publications through NYU Library's subscription to that publisher's database.
INSPEC (via Engineering Village) This link opens in a new window
A component of the larger citation index ISI Web of Knowledge, Inspec is a tool for surveying the literature in physics, electrical and electronic engineering, computers, control engineering and information technology. It indexes widely in ECE, with hundreds of thousands of citations in areas such as Automation & Control Systems, Robotics and Telecommunications.

As part of a larger citation index (as opposed to a full-text database), Inspec does not provide direct access to articles but rather citations for them. It has a module to help users formulate search queries and to target relevant materials with optimal precision and can be a very useful tool when compiling a list of existing literature on a topic. Inspec also has a feature called a Citation Map which generates a visualization of all the earlier literature cited by a given source and all the subsequent literature which cites that source.
To restrict your search to Inspec, deselect "Compendex" below the search box.
MathSciNet This link opens in a new window
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A database published by the American Mathematical Society containing citations and records for over 100,000 publications in areas such as: Probability and Stochastic Processes; Optics and Electromagnetic Theory; Systems Theory and Control; Information and Communication, Circuits and Optimal Control.

Records are grouped according to the database's elaborately articulated and somewhat arcane 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. Some codes of interest for ECE are: 49 - Calculus of Variations and Optimal Control; 60 - Probability Theory and Stochastic Processes; 78 - Optics, Electromagnetic Theory; 93 - Systems Theory, Control; 94 - Information and Communication, Circuits.

Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographic tools are used to compile more or less comprehensive lists of the existing literature on a subject or topic.

With the help of these tools, users group entries in a bibliographic database together according to criteria they set by manipulating parameters in a search interface.

As a rule bibliographic databases in ECE will have records for documents of all genres (books, journals, articles, working papers, conference proceedings, dissertations and theses, technical reports, etc.). Also be aware that, when what you’re looking for is a comprehensive bibliography on a specific topic, it’s a good idea to find out if there’s a recent thesis or dissertation on that topic. Authors of dissertations and theses are required to conduct exhaustive surveys of existing literature relevant to their project. They therefore represent excellent bibliography-mining opportunities. For more on searching for dissertations & theses see the Dissertations & Theses tab in this guide.