World History: Ancient & Medieval ErasThis link opens in a new windowcomprehensive survey of early human history around the world, from prehistoric times to the beginnings of the Renaissance. Reference content is organized by both place and time and includes narrative historical accounts; profiles of city-states, countries, and regions of the ancient world; and detailed overviews of religions, cultural practices, conflicts, and more. In original journal articles, prominent historians consider the mysteries of our world’s past as well as the political and cultural themes throughout history that continue to warrant scholarly investigation today.
1500-1700 (Emergence of Modern Europe); 1500-1776 (The World Beyond Europe); 1700-1800 (The Age of Reason); 1776-1825 (A Time of Revolutions); 1776-1914 (Spheres of Influence); 1815-1914 (The Rise of Nationalism); 1800-1914 (The Rise of the Industrial Revolution); 1914-1945 (The World at War); 1945-1991 (The Cold War); 1991- Present (A New Millennium)
Global Issues in ContextThis link opens in a new windowGlobal Issues in Context offers international viewpoints on a broad spectrum of global issues, topics, and current events. Featured are hundreds of continuously updated issue and country portals that bring together a variety of specially selected, highly relevant sources for analysis of these issues. Rich multimedia - including podcasts, video, and interactive graphs - enhance each portal. Use Browse Issues and Topics, Country Finder, Basic Search or Advanced Search to explore the database.
CIA World FactbookThis link opens in a new windowFree resource.The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.
Our Reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, a World Oceans map, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map.
When searching databases and the open Internet, use and combine these Key Terms:
Anthropocene epoch — A new epoch, not formally accepted by geologists, during which our species has become the dominant force for change in the biosphere. The Anthropocene marks the end of the Holocene epoch, about the time of the Industrial Revolution, 200 years ago.
Black Death — The fourteenth-century outbreak of bubonic plague, which killed up to half the population of Europe.
carrying capacity — The maximum number of individuals that a region’s resources can support or sustain.
exchange networks — Networks that link people, societies, and regions through the transfer of information, goods, people, and sometimes disease. All forms of collective learning work through exchange networks.
globalization — The expansion of exchange networks until they begin to reach across the entire world.
Holocene epoch — The geological epoch that begins with the end of the last ice age, about 13,000 years ago, and ends at the start of the Anthropocene epoch, about 200 years ago.
hub region — A geographical region characterized by an exceptional amount of exchange of people, ideas, and goods taking place—Mesopotamia, for example. After 1500, the Atlantic regions became a significant hub region through Europe’s control of the major international sea routes.
Industrial Revolution — A period of technological innovation starting in England late in the eighteenth century that resulted in a major change in the way goods were produced, and caused a major shift in global economics. These innovations came as a result of the systematic use of fossil fuels in place of human and animal power to manufacturing, communications, and transportation.
Malthusian cycles — Long cycles of economic, demographic, cultural, and political expansion, generally followed by periods of crisis and decline. These cycles, generally lasting several centuries, are apparent throughout the era of agrarian civilizations, and were probably set into motion by the inability of innovation to keep pace with population growth. Named for Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), an English pastor and economist.
Modern Revolution — A deliberately vague label for the revolutionary transformations that have created the modern world. The Modern Revolution began around 1500 and ushered in the Modern era of human history.
Silk Roads — The trade routes connecting Europe to the Middle East, India, and China.
steam engines — Machines that burn coal to produce steam, used to perform mechanical work. James Watt configured the first profitable one at the time of the American Revolution. Their use launched human society over a threshold no longer limited by the annual flow of solar energy.
steppe lands — Arid grasslands that are suitable for grazing animals but too dry for agriculture.
world zones — Four unconnected geographic zones that emerged as sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. The four world zones are: Afro-Eurasia (Africa and the Eurasian landmasses, plus offshore islands like Britain and Japan); The Americas (North, Central, and South America, plus offshore islands); Australasia (Australia, the island of Papua New Guinea, plus neighboring islands); and the island societies of the Pacific (New Zealand, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Hawaii).
Academic JournalsAcademic Journals is a broad-based publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals. Academic Journals currently publishes 111 open access journals covering art and humanities, engineering, medical science, social sciences, biological sciences, physical sciences and agricultural sciences.
arXivPhysics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics
BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search EngineBASE provides more than 100 million documents from more than 4,000 sources. You can access the full texts of about 60% of the indexed documents for free (Open Access). BASE is operated by Bielefeld University Library.
EconBizEconBiz is a search portal for economics and business studies. It offers:
A literature search across important German and international databases;
Access to full texts on the internet;
Acalendar of events for scholarly conferences and summer schools;
Reference service Research Guide EconDesk which answers your questions about the search for literature and statistical data.
Elementa: Science of the AnthropoceneAtmospheric Science
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology
Ocean Science
Sustainability Transitions
Sustainable Engineering
Microsoft Academic"Semantic search" responds with results based on more than keywords
National Bureau of Economics Researcha private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
NBER-affiliated researchers study a wide range of topics and they employ many different methods in their work. Key focus areas include developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, and analyzing the effects of public policies.
OpenGrey - Grey LiteratureSystem for Information on Grey Literature in Europe, is your open access to 700.000 bibliographical references of grey literature (paper) produced in Europe and allows you to export records and locate the documents.
Examples of grey (gray) literature include technical or research reports, doctoral dissertations, some conference papers, some official publications, and other types of grey literature. OpenGrey covers Science, Technology, Biomedical Science, Economics, Social Science and Humanities. The site includes preprints from the GL conferences (GreyNet International) in full text.
PhilPapersSome are open source. However, when you click on a topic it provides a good overview and keywords, people, dates.
RefSeekRefSeek's unique approach offers students comprehensive subject coverage without the information overload of a general search engine—increasing the visibility of academic information and compelling ideas that are often lost in a muddle of sponsored links and commercial results.
Springer OpenOffers a roster of more than 160 peer-reviewed, open access journals, as well as their more recent addition of free access books, covering all scientific disciplines.
arXivPhysics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics
ASDL: Analytical Sciences Digital LibraryASDL, collects, catalogs, links and publishes peer reviewed web-based discovery materials pertinent to innovations in curricular development and supporting technical resources in the analytical sciences.
BioMed CentralUK-based publisher of 258 peer-reviewed open access journals. Their published works span science, technology and medicine and include many well-regarded titles.
BioOneBioOne is a nonprofit publisher that aims to make scientific research more accessible through a growing portfolio of products including its full-text aggregation, BioOne Complete, and open-access journal, Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. Established in 1999 by five founding organizations—the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), The University of Kansas, the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), and Allen Press, Inc—BioOne serves a community of over 140 society and institutional publishers, 4,000 accessing institutions, and millions of researchers worldwide.
The Clay Mathematics InstituteThe Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) is a privately funded operating foundation dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge.
Copernicus PublicationsAn open-access scientific publisher in Germany since 2001. They are strong supporters of the researchers who create these articles, providing top-level peer review and promotion for their work.
De Gruyter OpenOne of Germany’s leading publishers of open access content. Today DeGruyter Open (DGO) publishes about 400 owned and third-party scholarly journals and books across all major disciplines.
EDP OpenFrance-based scientific publisher with an international mission. They publish more than 50 scientific journals, with some 60,000 published pages annually.
Elementa: Science of the AnthropoceneAtmospheric Science
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology
Ocean Science
Sustainability Transitions
Sustainable Engineering
Europe PMCA database of biomedical and life sciences literature with access to full-text research articles and citation. Europe PMC includes resources from PubMed and PubMed Central (PMC), projects developed at the NCBI in the USA. Europe PMC is part of a network of PMC International (PMCI) repositories that also includes PMC Canada.
GMD - Gohn Metabolone DatabaseThe Golm Metabolome Database (GMD) facilitates the search for and dissemination of reference mass spectra from biologically active metabolites quantified using gas chromatography (GC) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS). GC/MS profiling studies aiming at the identification of compounds from complex biological mixtures depend on the comparison of observed mass spectra and retention times with reference libraries such as the GMD. The GMD comprises mass spectra and retention time indices of pure reference substances and frequently observed mass spectral tags (MST: mass spectrum linked to chromatographic retention) of yet unidentified metabolites.
NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration PubSpacePubMed Central (PMC) is a full-text, online archive of journal literature operated by the National Library of Medicine. NASA is using PMC to permanently preserve and provide easy public access to the peer-reviewed papers resulting from NASA-funded research.
Open Science DirectoryContains about 13,000 scientific journals, with another 7,000 special programs titles.
OSTI - Office of Science and Technical InformationU.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) is the Department of Energy (DOE) office that collects, preserves, and disseminates DOE-sponsored research and development (R&D) results that are the outcomes of R&D projects or other funded activities at DOE labs and facilities nationwide and grantees at universities and other institutions. The information is typically in the form of technical documents, conference papers, articles, multimedia, and software, collectively referred to as scientific and technical information (STI).
PubChemU.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Heath and Human Services.
SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library OnlineSciELO is a bibliographic database and a model for cooperative electronic publishing in developing countries originally from Brazil. It contains 985 scientific journals from different countries in free and universal access, full-text format.
Science.govScience.gov searches over 60 databases and over 2200 selected websites from 15 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results. Science.gov is governed by the interagency Science.gov Alliance.
Scientilion)perating and used in over 20 countries worldwide. A search engine with a difference, Scientilion was built with a commitment to aid scientific research through an easier and faster interface. Within a short while Scientillion turned into a popular research search engine providing holistic academic and scientific content in all arenas of work. Our main focus is on quantitative science
Semantic Scholar - Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligencesingular focus of conducting high-impact research and engineering in the field of artificial intelligence, all for the common good. AI2 is the creation of Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder, and is led by Dr. Oren Etzioni, a world-renowned researcher and professor in the field of AI and computer science.
WorldWideScience.orgGlobal science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals. WorldWideScience.org accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching of databases from around the world (Architecture: What is under the Hood). Multilingual WorldWideScience.org provides real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed multilingual scientific literature.
The World Factbook provides basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 266 world entities.