Reviews

A Review collects together, and critically evaluates, information on a given subject topic, from a variety of sources. Reviews are valuable because they are written by acknowledged experts who give a "considered opinion" or evaluation about the subject and, not least, because they often contain extensive lists of references. Reviews are, therefore, one of the most useful sources of information when you are starting to work on a project. If you can find a recent review early on in a search, you can save a lot of time and effort.
Reviews are published in many primary journals in physics, for example Journal of Physics and in specialised review publications with titles such as Advances in..., Annual Review of... Progress in .... etc.

Examples:

Progress of Theoretical Physics. Tokyo, 1965-1974.
Advances in Physics. London,1994-
Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science. New York, 1995-
Progress in Nuclear Energy. London, 1997-

A good place to look for review articles is in the Index to Scientific Reviews. The Index to Scientific Reviews covers not only science, but also medicine and some technology. It contains review articles from both specialised review publications and from ordinary primary research journals. Review articles are arranged in alphabetical order by name of the author. Subject searches are carried out by means of the subject index - Permuterm Index. The author's name acts as the link to the reference. It is also possible to search in the Citation Index for reviews that cite a given article.

Another good way to obtain review articles is to search in databases such as:

  1. INSPEC
  2. COMPENDEX

If you include the terms, review, overview, survey, in your searches, these should give you the reviews that you are looking for. In many cases it is possible to see the number of references that are included in the review. This can be useful in saving time on literature searches.

There are a number of serial publications which specialise in review articles. The most important general review publications in physics are:

Advances in Physics
(London: Taylor & Francis. 6 issues per year).These give long critical reviews at a high research level.
Contemporary Physics
(London : Taylor & Francis. 6 issues per year).Readable accounts covering a broad range of subjects.
Fortschritte der Physik = Progress in Physics
(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.12 issues per year).
Physics Reports
(Amsterdam : North Holland. approximately 1 issue per week). Each issue is a distinct review on one topic.
Reports on Progress in Physics
(London : Institute of Physics. 12 issues per year). These are advanced reviews which often treat development over a longer period.
Reviews of Modern Physics
(New York : AIP. 4 issues per year). These include articles for specialists as well as tutorial articles directed towards students. They also contain listings of review articles published elsewhere and can therefore be used to find reviews of interest. The published articles are refereed and the quality is high.
Physics.Uspechi
(New York: AIP. 12 issues per year).This is an English translation of the Russian Review journal - Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk. Review papers are comparable to those of Reviews in Modern Physics. Reports on scientific meetings are also included.
Springer Tracts in Modern Physics (= Ergebnisse der exakten Naturvissenschaften)
This is an important monographic series in which whole volumes are devoted to reviews of single subject areas. (Berlin: Springer. 1-2 books per year).

A related, but slightly different type of publication, are the Comments... publications such as:

Comments on Modern Physics (London : Gordon & Breach). These publications aim to provide critical comment on current controversial matters in different aspects of physics, rather than an in depth review.

Comments on Modern Physics contains different parts:

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