Search Options
Use the Lib4RI Search Tool to quickly find:
For books, journals and reference works, you can also search directly in Lib4RI's library catalogue swisscovery (including e-resources) to find borrowing options for print collections. In some cases, searching directly on journal and book publishing platforms may also be useful.
Feel free to browse our full list of available databases and see our curated list of reference works.
The institutional repository DORA provides access to publications by researchers from Eawag, Empa, PSI and WSL.
Lib4RI provides access to research data from the four research institutes through several institutional and external repositories. EnviDat is WSL's research data repository. ERIC is Eawag's research data repository and is divided into ERIC/open, which is publicly accessible, and ERIC/internal, which is only visible to Eawag employees. Empa has an official Zenodo community for its research data, while the PSI Public Data Repository provides access to publicly available research data from PSI. Materials Cloud Archive is an open data repository and workflow platform for computational materials science with contributions from researchers at Empa and PSI. Lib4RI Search also provides access to research data from external repositories such as Zenodo and DataCite Commons.
Standards can be searched and ordered (registration required) via the Nautos Standards Portal. If you cannot access or find a document, Lib4RI’s Document Delivery Service can help obtain articles, books, reports, standards and other materials from external sources.
Also consider our four-page info sheets on Search & Read.
For broader thematic searches and the exploration of a research topic, Lib4RI provides access to both interdisciplinary and subject-specific databases and search guidance. Use the Databases page to identify suitable databases for your discipline and research question. In particular, the interdisciplinary bibliographic databases Scopus and Web of Science (Core Collection) are recommended.
The info sheet Topic Search explains how to develop a structured search strategy using Boolean operators, truncation, wildcards and other database-specific techniques, identify keywords, and search efficiently across multiple information sources.
You may also use AI-assisted research/database tools – such as Consensus or scite.ai (both are fully licensed by Lib4RI) – to support research summaries, literature discovery, topic exploration and search refinement. The corresponding databases can also be connected to generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Claude, enabling AI-assisted database searching directly within the chatbot of your choice.
Although considerably more comprehensive and typically intended to support the preparation of a systematic or other review article, many of the principles discussed in the section Systematic Literature Search also apply to a general topic search.
Systematic literature searching aims to achieve comprehensive and reproducible retrieval of scientific literature, typically in preparation for a systematic review or evidence synthesis. Lib4RI supports researchers with:
The section Resources & more provides valuable links to tools dedicated to Systematic literature search.
Alongside the classic search methods described on this page and its subpages - the Lib4RI Search Tool, the library catalogue, and bibliographic databases such as Scopus and Web of Science - AI-assisted search has become a valuable addition. These tools accept natural-language queries, summarise findings across multiple papers, surface key references and subject experts, and help transform a vague idea into a structured search strategy. While AI-assisted search can complement conventional database searching, it does not guarantee comprehensive retrieval and should not replace a systematic literature search using structured search queries in established databases. It can, however, accelerate the early stages of your search and help you refine your topic before carrying out a rigorous, reproducible literature search.
