GRC Virtual Research Guide: Sustainability

"The database contains bibliographic references to and abstracts of journal articles, reports, conference papers, books, websites, and other miscellaneous document types. A link to where the full text can be obtained is also provided within the records when at all possible. More information about full text access is described in the Full-Text Literature section. The subject areas covered in the database are quite extensive. Some of the main areas include information on energy R&D; energy policy and planning; basic sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry and biomedical) and materials research; the environmental impact of energy production and use, including climate change; energy conservation; nuclear (e.g., reactors, isotopes, waste management); coal and fossil fuels; renewable energy technologies (e.g., solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, hydro) and much, much more. For more details, including a look at content in various areas over the past five years, see the Subject Contents section.

In addition to the energy research and technology information from member countries, the database contains citations published worldwide regarding nuclear, coal, and global climate change information. This broader coverage comes through cooperation with other international organizations. Users of ETDE's Energy Database are as diverse as the topics covered: scientists/researchers, engineers, policymakers, information specialists, librarians, industry leaders and university faculty/students."

GreenFILE offers information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 384,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,700 records.

Web of Science provides access to current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from approximately 8,700 of the most prestigious, high-impact research journals in the world. Web of Science also provides a unique search method, cited reference searching. With it, you can navigate forward, backward, and through the literature, searching all disciplines and time spans to uncover all the information relevant to your research. The citation index allows you to see (a) all the references cited by the article, and (b) what other articles have cited the article. This is a good database to use if you have an article of interest and want to expand your search to related documents. Links to related articles are provided.
Note: Limited to three (3) concurrent users

It is important to review patents from other countries when conducting a patent search or for a thorough literature search. The German and Japanese patent offices are much faster at approving and posting patents than is the US Patent Office. Thus, searching world patents can result in newer, more cutting-edge research.