Looking for an encyclopedia of bugs you can get at home, an idea for a chemistry experiment for a middle-schooler, a citation to a research article in astrophysics or news of the latest trends in biotechnology? You can find most of this and more right at your local branch of The New York Public Library, or sometimes even at home. Because of the breadth of the collecting of electronic resources at NYPL there is a very large range of science material—encyclopedias, dictionaries, journals, and research monographs—available to a range of audiences on computer screens throughout the system. What follows is a brief guide to the resources for high-school to post-graduate audiences, pointing out forms and levels. Please also consult these broad interest and long lasting periodicals: Nature, Popular Science, Science, and Scientific American. A detailed guide for children and middle-school scientists will appear separately.

Academic Search Premier

For general to specialist audiences. Academic Search Premier is a database of more than 13,000 indexed and abstracted journals, including full text for nearly 4,000 peer-reviewed titles. Backfile journals in PDF form go back to 1975 or further for nearly 150 journals. Academic Search Premier comprises of magazines, scholarly journals, newspapers, trade publications and books. Science topics include Astronomy, Biology, Biotechnology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Environmental Sciences, Genetics, Mathematics and Physics.

Access from all locations or remotely with a library card.

Physical Review Journals

For specialist audiences, the site for Physical Review Journals (previously American Physical Society Journals) gives access to the full text of the Society’s research-level articles in its core physics interests over the lifetime of the journals. Included are: Physical Review Letters, Physical Review X, and Reviews of Modern Physics, Physical Review A to Physical Review E, Physical Review Fluids, Physical Review Materials, and Physical Review Physics Education Research. The site also provides some free access to the Society’s more generalist journal Physics Today.   

Access from all locations.

arXiv

For specialist audiences. arXiv is a repository of very specialized e-print articles in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics. Now maintained by the Cornell University Library it allows access to more than one million articles uploaded since 1990.

Free access online

Credo Reference

For general audiences. Credo Reference provides access to full-text online versions of approximately 1200 published reference works from more than 70 publishers on a variety of major subjects. These include general and subject dictionaries as well as encyclopedias. 167 science and technology resources are searchable in Credo Reference. Search results can be printed, emailed or downloaded.

Access from all locations or remotely with a library card.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

For general audiences. GVRL contains monographs and encyclopedias covering a wide range in medicine, science and technology including books of experiments. There is material for all age levels, with an emphasis on K-12th grade. The subjects break down as follows: Environment, Medicine, Science, Technology (very broadly treated). Some titles appear in more than one category.

Access from all locations or remotely with a library card.

JSTOR

For general to specialist audiences. JSTOR is a collection of more than two thousand archival journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. It is an excellent resource for scholarly and academic science journals in the subjects of Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics, Physics which among others includes Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Coverage of periodicals begins at the first volume and issue ever published, and extends up to a publication date usually set in the past three to five years. Selected journals are available up to the current year. The database is fully searchable and articles can be read online or downloaded as a PDF.

Access from all locations.

Oxford Reference

For general to specialist audiences. Oxford Reference offers 51 science and technology titles which provide more than 117,000 concise definitions and in-depth, specialist encyclopedic entries on the very latest terminology, concepts, theories, techniques, people, and organizations relating to all areas of science and technology—from astronomy, engineering, physics, computer science, and mathematics, to life and earth sciences, chemistry, environmental science, and biology. Written for researchers at every level.

Access from all locations or remotely with a library card.

Public Library of Science

For general to specialist audiences. PLOS is a suite of Open-Access, peer-reviewed journals. In 2014, PLOS published more than 33,000 articles; each one required participation from at least one of the 90,000+ contributors involved in the peer review process across the PLOS suite of journals. The signature journal of PLOS, PLOS ONE features reports of original research from all disciplines within science and medicine. It is the one to find articles on any science topic. Other PLOS journals include: PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Pathogens, and PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

You can use PLOS One to find journal articles on any science topic. To find articles for specific topics, you can try these links below to browse articles by topics in PLOS One: Biology and Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Chemistry, Computer and Information Sciences, Earth Sciences, Ecology & Environmental Sciences, Engineering & Technology, Mathematics, Medicine & Health Sciences, Physics.

Free access online.

Project Muse

For general to specialist audiences. Project MUSE's mission is to excel in the broad dissemination of high-quality scholarly content. Although it focuses on digital humanities and social science content it also covers science, technology, and mathematics. At this moment it provides access to more than 2,000 monographs and 14 journals in these fields. The content has been written by the most prestigious authors and scholars in their fields.

Access from all locations or remotely with a library card.

Science.gov

For general to specialist audiences. Science.gov is a gateway site to information from U. S. federal government activities. It covers all aspects of science of interest to the government and provides a search platform to over 60 databases and 2200 websites.

Free access online.

ScienceDirect

For specialist audiences. ScienceDirect is the platform from which publishing giant Elsevier delivers a very large range of journal content under a variety of levels of service. Easily the most powerful service is that of an index to a huge range of sophisticated journal content that may need to be located at other libraries. But ScienceDirect also provides full-text access to Open Access journals to varying degrees. There are more than 250 journals available on the OA basis and more than 1,500 on the ‘Some OA’ basis, covering the full range of science subjects. Use the e-journal finder to locate titles available through ScienceDirect. Find out more on how to use ScienceDirect.

Indexing functionality and Open Access journals can be freely accessed via the World Wide Web. To locate other journals use our e-journal finder.

University Press Scholarship Online

For specialist audiences. UPSO aggregates content from leading university presses which is fully cross-searchable via a single online platform. The NYPL’s access offers more than 500 high-level, peer-reviewed scholarly monographs which cover the following subjects (which are further subdivided): computer science, environmental science, mathematics , neuroscience, biology, and physics.

Access from all locations or remotely with a library card.