SPIN (Searchable Physics Information Network) is an abstract database provided by the American Institute of Physics.  It provides the most current indexing and abstracting of major American and Russian physics and astronomy journals. SPIN contains the abstracts of over 80 scientific journals published by the American Institute of Physics and its Member Societies since 1975, as well as selected articles from other scientific journals, totaling close to 1 million articles. The American Journal of Physics,  Physics Teacher, and Reviews of Modern Physics are the only journals that have full text available on SPIN Web; for other titles, please use the "search for full text" link to see if it is available from another resource at the library.  Unavailable items can be requested through Inter-Library Loan or an option for ordering articles from SPIN with an individual credit card is also available.

SPIN Web is available from on campus or from off-campus with an APSU ID.

How to search SPIN Web

Simple Search:

Enter your search term/s in the first input field and the “Full Bibliographic Record” will be searched. When ready to execute the search, click the Search button or press <Enter>. Other fields that can be searched are: Abstract/Title/Keywords, Author, Affiliation, (just the) Abstract, (just the) title, (just the) keywords, the section head, Journal or CODEN, or the PACS (Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme) Code.

 Viewing Results:

Each page of results can display up to 50 citations (default is 25 citations) and the maximum number of results that can be displayed is 500 (maximum of 10 pages of results). An example result is:

To view the abstract of the article, click on the article’s title. Because SPINweb is only a citation database at Austin Peay, the “Full Text”, “PDF” and “Gzipped PS” links will ask for a login. Check out How to Access Periodicals to see if full-text availability of article is available via another database.  If desired, the article can be ordered, at YOUR EXPENSE by providing credit card information OR you can request the article via an ILL request

 The number in red (above) is the score. “Scoring of the results list is related to both query hit density and document size. That is, document scores are calculated based on the proportion of instances found in relation to the size of the region containing the words. The document with the smallest region containing all search terms receives the highest score.”

 Printing

To print the abstract of the article, use the browser print button.

 Advanced Searching:

SPINweb has Advanced search capability using a specialized syntax. A comprehensive description is located at the bottom of the Advanced Search page. An example of an advanced search is:

 (“carbon nanotubes” <IN> keywords) <AND>(JVTBD9 <IN> coden) <AND> (24 <IN> volume)

 -- this translates into, "Look for 'carbon nanotubes' in the keyword index. Limit search to the journal with CODEN of JVTBD9 [Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B: Microelectronics and Nanometer Structures], volume 24."

 Finally, as would be expected for a science-focused database, extensive helps to use the database are available on the search pages and at this link.