Choose your database

What is a database? | What is a bibliographic database? How Can This Help Me? | The appropriate bibliographic database for your research | Suggest a New Database

What is a database?

Although databases vary widely in content and functionality, the term broadly refers to a collection of structured digital data organized and indexed for easy searching. These systems typically feature a graphical interface with search filters and queries of varying complexity.

Databases come in many forms—including bibliographic, citation, factual, full-text, image, patent, and primary research data. Driven by evolving technology, these types are increasingly blending together to create innovative services for the research community.

On this page, we focus specifically on bibliographic databases.

What is a bibliographic database? How Can This Help Me?

It is a platform that provides a bibliographic indexing service of the scientific literature published in one or more specific fields of study in a defined timespan. Typically, the search covers periodical literature and publications of a miscellaneous nature such as proceedings or minutes of congresses but may be extended to book chapters, monographs, theses, technical reports, and other types of publications.

Bibliographic databases index, in general, hundreds of journals, enabling a contemporary search by a single digital ambient among thousands of academic articles submitted to peer review.

A bibliographic search database is thus an ideal tool for finding articles published on a given author, topic or subject.  

With the registration relating to the the publication, some of the most important bibliographic databases offer a linking service to access the full text of the publication itself, subject to rights granted by subscriptions signed by the Library or in virtue of connected open licences.

Some of the main bibliographic databases are examined by our SEARCH catalogue, selecting the Extended search mode that the generic search box proposes when you start a search.  

It is not possible to list the resources examinable via the Extended Search since the list of databases and of many other digital contents varies each week; here you can see the types of resources available with this option.

Bear in mind that this type of selection can save you a considerable amount of time compared with the examination of every individual database, although in this case the search settings are very general, whereas the examination of the individual database allows for much more sophisticated and precise searches, enabling a much more accurate filtering of the information and a more efficacious use of the advanced services available.

Hence for specialist searches, we suggest that you always use the individual database directly.

The appropriate bibliographic database for your research

General or interdisciplinary bibliographic databases offer a wide coverage of many subjects, whereas others are specialized in specific study fields or subjects that are covered particularly in depth. 

For a first approach it could be of use to utilise two important multidisciplinary bibliographic databases that offer a commercial service with access in the SNS network guaranteed by the  licence signed by the SNS Library: Scopus and Web of Science (WoS), which provide a very wide coverage in the area of English language technical and scientific publishing but a decidedly poorer coverage of non-English language publishing in the humanistic and socio-political area.

An interesting interdisciplinary alternative is OpenAlex, a free service that consults a vast set of open access online resources produced by institutional editors, research institutions and open publishing. 

To start with, we propose a selection of bibliographic databases, but only as a beginning; on the basis of your interests, you can explore our catalog of databases, organized by disciplinary area and which includes other types of databases besides those of bibliographic examination. 

Suggest a New Database

Have you found an online database not currently listed on our database catalogue that you think would be useful to other users?
You can suggest its inclusion using the recommendation form, keeping the following guidelines in mind:

• Free access: The database must be freely accessible online, preferably without requiring registration. If you would like to propose the purchase of a fee-based database, please use the purchase request form instead.
• Accepted types: You may suggest various types of databases, including bibliographic or full-text databases, research or factual data repositories, linguistic and literary corpora, and digital libraries.
• Criteria: Selected databases must meet certain technical requirements (primarily, an internal search engine enabling the retrieval of properly indexed content) and academic standards (disciplinary relevance to SNS study and research areas, scholarly authority, and resource stability). Databases set within commercial contexts are generally excluded.
• Preliminary check: The online resource you wish to suggest might already be listed in the Web Resources section, which we recommend checking first.
• Evaluation process: Your suggestion will be forwarded to the subject librarian for the relevant field of study, who will evaluate whether to include it. Please note that submitting a proposal does not automatically guarantee acceptance.

Your collaboration will be appreciated.