LibGuides@Southampton: Technical Information: Conferences

Why use Conferences?

Conferences are useful ways for academics to present and discuss their work. They can be published formally: sometimes as a book (series), sometimes more like a journal or informally online.

We have a good collection from the ACM, IEEE & IEE/IET (mostly online), and from the European Space Agency (print/CD). We have a number of other engineering and science conferences, mostly in print.

Key Databases

Compendex This link opens in a new window
Compendex is the broadest and most complete engineering literature database available in the world. It provides a truly holistic and global view of peer reviewed and indexed publications with over 20 million records from 77 countries across 190 engineering disciplines. Further information.
INSPEC This link opens in a new window
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A leading database in the fields of physics, electronics and electrical engineering, computers and control, and information technology. It contains abstracts of articles from over 3000 journals, as well as conference proceedings, books, technical reports and dissertations. Coverage: 1966 to date. Further information

Key Conference Collections

ACM Digital Library This link opens in a new window
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Full text access to the Association of Computing Machineries journals and conferences - this includes all current content and in many cases a full backfile (to the 1950s in some cases).
IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window
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Full text access to all IET and IEEE journals and conferences since 1988 and all active and archival (but not draft) IEEE standards.

Support for Technical Information

If you have any queries about technical information, the resources mentioned or wish to make any comments about these pages, please contact us (libenqs@soton.ac.uk).

Understanding a Conference Article Reference

A correctly formatted reference will tell you exactly where to find the full article:

Pennie, D.J. et al (2007). Human factors guidance for maintenance, International Conference - Human Factors in Ship Design, Safety and Operation, March 21-22. London: Royal Institution of Naval Architects, 145-154.

This article was written by D.J. Pennie & colleagues, and the article's title is "Human factors guidance for maintenance". It was published in 2007 in the conference called "International Conference - Human Factors in Ship Design, Safety and Operation". It was published by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects in London and the article ran from page 145 to 154.

How Do I Know If You Have It?

Found a good conference article? Now you need to know whether you can get the full text.

If you've run a database search, the article's record may have a "Full Text" or "PDF" link - that's great: click to get the full text. If not,look out for the Full Text Finder icon and any links that will search the library catalogue for you.

These links tend to be less reliable for conferences than journals. It's always worth doing a manual search of Library Search.

Searching Library Search for Conferences

Search Library Search for the conference title not the article title.

A keyword search is probably best for a broad search and to find conferences treated as books
It is best to leave out the year (sometimes there is a single record for a series)
It's best to leave out the number (2nd, 3rd, etc.) - sometimes references abbreviate these replacing a number expressed as words (second) with a numeral (2nd)

Not Available?

If we don't have the conference (paper) or technical report you need it's worth a searching Google to see if there's a free/open access version somewhere.

If not you can request it via our Inter-Library Loans service.

Off-Campus Access

Accessing library resources from home

To connect to library resources such as databases and journals you will need to use the University’s VPN service called Globalprotect. Advice on how to set your connection up can be found on the iSolutions page How do I set up VPN on my device?