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INSPEC moving from Web of Science to Engineering Village platform

December 21, 2018 Author: Resource LiaisonsCategories: Tags:

[Article updated on 1/4/19 to emphasize that the platform change affects University of California access only.]

Beginning January 1, 2019, INSPEC will be available for the University of California (UC) libraries on the Engineering Village (EV) platform, with Compendex, a broad database for engineering and applied science.  UC’s access to INSPEC will end on the Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science platform.

INSPEC is the premier database for physics, astronomy, electronics engineering, computer science, mechanical and production engineering, and information technology.  Users will be able to search INSPEC and Compendex separately to use the special index features unique to those databases and/or better manage author indexing variations. Or they may search the two main databases together for ease in quicker and broader searches, particularly of engineering literature since both databases go back to the late 1800s. Results may be de-duplicated with the user’s preferred database records from Compendex or INSPEC as desired. One bonus feature of the Engineering Village platform is the ability to view the latest 20 articles citing a paper/article as found in Scopus.

Engineering Village also has Knovel book content indexed as another searchable database for those UC campuses with an active subscription (UCB, UCI, UCLA, UCM, UCR, UCSB, UCSD).

Special features of INSPEC include:

  • Ability to narrow results by treatment code (general/review articles, experimental, theoretical, applications approach, economic, new development, practical, or product review)
  • Numeric/property, and astronomical objects searching
  • Inorganic chemical substance and materials systems searching (of particular utility when searching semi- and super-conductor materials)

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has an INSPEC on Engineering Village libguide available, including how to use expert searching and display details (not abstract view) for these specialized indexing terms.

Access to INSPEC will be available on both platforms starting now through January 1st.  Currently, the INSPEC PID (http://uclibs.org/PID/22771), resolves to an interim screen with links to both platforms (WoS and EV) to ease campus users into the transition.  If campuses are currently using a direct URL to the INSPEC database, they may wish to change to the persistent identifiers (PIDs) in their lists of databases, guides, etc.  On January 2nd, the INSPEC PID will change automatically to the new EV INSPEC URL.

Campuses without a 2019 subscription to INSPEC (UCSB, UCSF) will still have access to the INSPEC Archive (1898-1968) via the same INSPEC PID.

The PIDs or URLs for the databases are:

Deborah Kegel, UCSD, is the Resource Liaison for INSPEC.