How to find research papers

Click here (opens in a new window). [Note: This is not for everyone on the Internet; it's a pay service that USC subscribes to. You can access it only from a computer on campus or via PPP dial-up connection to USC --not through another ISP.]

Click the link that says: Search from List of FirstSearch Databases

Scroll down to the P's and click on the PapersFirst Database.  There's also a ProceedingsFirst database, INSPEC and Microcomputer Abstracts.

  1. When you find an interesting paper, tag it by clicking the "Tag Record" box to its right in the search results.
  2. Click the "Show" button at the top left of the screen underneath "Tagged Records."
  3. Click "E-Mail Records" and enter your e-mail address. The list with all the details you need (authors, conference, dates, publisher, journal, etc.) will be e-mailed to you instantly.

To see which of your papers are already somewhere on campus (wouldn't that be great?), check Homer. It's easy!

Papers not on campus can be ordered through Global Express (click "Basic Service" on the left). It takes a few days just to get your order going, and then some time after that to get the papers, so this is something to do early in the semester.  It's free (rush service is available for $25 per paper).  They e-mail you when a paper arrives, and you pick it up at the Leavey Library reference desk (1st floor).

If you can't wait weeks for your papers to trickle in, find them on the web!   Go to the author's institution's web site and search for his web page; there you will find all his papers.  Just click and download.  Don't know the institution?  Search for keywords in Google, Yahoo, Lycos or Hotbot.  More sources of scientific papers: ResearchIndex and http://www.ncstrl.org/ 

Every time I found a paper it has been in Postscript format. Download it to aludra and print it on one of the Postscript printers in SAL. NOTE: the papers are usually compressed in gzip format, so make sure you gunzip it before printing or you will get a stack of garbage. If you do this at SAL, it will be an expensive stack of garbage.   :)  The command to print a Postscript document in SAL from a Unix host:
lpr -Pps_sal125 filename  To print duplex (both sides of the sheet): lpr -Pps_sal125_dp filename