A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records. This is an organised online collection of references to published written works like journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, patents and books. In contrast to library catalogue entries, a majority of the records in bibliographic databases describe articles and conference papers rather than complete monographs, and they generally contain very rich subject descriptions in the form of keywords, subject classification terms, or abstracts.[1]
A bibliographic database may cover a wide range of topics or one academic field like computer science.[2] A significant number of bibliographic databases are marketed under a trade name by licensing agreement from vendors, or directly from their makers: the indexing and abstracting services.[3]
Many bibliographic databases have evolved into digital libraries, providing the full text of the organised contents:[citation needed]for instance CORE also organises and mirrors scholarly articles and OurResearch develops a search engine for open access content in Unpaywall.[4] Others merge with non-bibliographic and scholarly databases to create more complete disciplinary search engine systems, such as Chemical Abstracts or Entrez.