Physics Subject Guide

The Web holds a wide variety of scientific information and misinformation, ranging from popular press coverage to scholarly communications to advertisements to science buff sites. Be careful when using information from web sites, it is changed often which makes it hard to cite it in a paper. If you can find the information in print, it is preferable to use that.

ArXiv.org
ArXiv (pronounced "archive.org") is a repository for research papers in physics, computer science, mathematics and neuroscience. While many of the papers on the server are high quality, be warned that they are not peer-reviewed. ArXiv does moderate the submissions for relevance and appropriateness, and has recently implemented and endorsement system for some submissions. However, this is not the same as peer-review.

Google Advanced Search
Many colleges and universities have a lot of good information on their web pages. Use the advanced search interface of google.com to limit your search to academic sites only (.edu, .ac.uk, etc). You can also try Google Scholar which tries to limit searches to scholarly papers. Note however, that many of the results will not be available for free. Check the library first before to see if we subscribe to the journal, or order through Resource Sharing instead of paying money for access.

NIST Physical Reference Data
The National Institute of Standards and Technology maintains this website, and it is very current. You can find numerical data, reference information and information on papers that have been published relating to the data. Be aware that many of the pages should be printed in landscape mode.

Physics World
This site is brought to you by the institute of physics. The site includes news, resources, company information and job listings. Check the "Latest News" section to see short articles on recently published articles.

Science.gov
A search engine that searches scientific information at government agencies.