Research Guides: Astronomy: Find Primary Literature

Finding Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed Articles

When you want to peer-reviewed, scholarly articles use these databases:

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Why search here? Great for discovering scholarly research across a wide array of subject areas, primarily published in high-impact (highly cited) journals in the physical and life sciences, health sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
Content type: Abstracts of scholarly articles, conference proceedings, book chapters
Coverage dates: 1965-present
Easily explore an article bibliography, as well as sources that have cited the article since its publication, via the Citation Network feature. Create a free personal account to keep a comprehensive search history, create search alerts and citation alerts. Additional features related to author and journal profiles are available.
Language: English, Russian, French, German, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, etc.
Text Mining: Allowed; only through Clarivate APIs
Keywords: Social Science Citation Index Science Citation Index Arts and Humanities Citation Index Conference Proceedings Citation Index Emerging Sources Citation Index WoS Knowledge
Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Why search here? Good starting point when researching topics that intersect with multiple disciplines.
Content type: Scholarly articles, newspaper articles, magazine articles, trade journal articles
Coverage dates: 1887-present; varies by title
Language: English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Turkish, French, Chinese, Arabic etc.
Keywords: ASP

SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System
From Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, under a NASA grant, contains abstracts, citations, preprints, and archives for materials in physics, astronomy, and related fields.

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Why search here? Good for conducting wide reaching searches of the scholarly literature and exploring citation based connections between articles.
Content type: Abstracts of scholarly articles, books, book chapters, patents
Start your search in Google Scholar from the library website to get access to open access materials and items only available through Library subscriptions.
Language: English

Astronomy Journals

Browse electronic journals in Astronomy, or explore one of these top titles:

Advances in Astronomy
Advances in Astronomy is a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal that publishes original research articles as well as review articles, in all areas of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology.
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy & Astrophysics is an international Journal that publishes papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics (theoretical, observational, and instrumental) independently of the techniques used to obtain the results.

Get This Item

Once you have found articles you want to read, the button provides a quick way to find any available online full-text copies or request electronic copies through Interlibrary Loan.

Step 1: first looks for any full text of your article that is available in the library's online resources. If it finds full text it will take you to a page where you can open the full text as either html or pdf.

Step 2: If the library doesn't have electronic access to the article you need, you can request a copy through Resource Sharing. Simply click on the "Request Item" button located towards the bottom of the record. Within a few days, you will receive an email from the library with a link to a downloadable copy of the article you requested.