Biology & Biochemistry Resources
Find Articles
Great places to start!
Web of Science and Scopus are multidisciplinary article databases that allow you to navigate forward and backward through literature so that you can follow the train of scholarly conversation on a topic.
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Web of ScienceWeb of Science is a multidisciplinary database of high-impact journal articles. Navigate forward and backward through literature with cited reference searching.
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ScopusScopus is a good starting point for finding articles on almost any topic and is an excellent database for cited reference searching. It does not contain full text articles, but users can link to full text by using the Get It button.
Biology Resources
The following resources are escpecially useful for general biology topics.
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ScienceDirectRetrieve articles, handbooks, and reference works in the sciences, technology, medicine, and social sciences.
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Nature.comAccess publications from the Nature Publishing Group in the sciences, especially biology, evolution & ecology, and microbiology.
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Environment CompleteAccess articles on topics in all areas of agriculture, ecology, and environmental sciences.
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AGRICOLAAccess articles, monographs, patents, and technical reports related to agriculture, ecology, and the environment.
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Biological & Agricultural Index PlusDiscover core literature of biology, agriculture, biochemistry, biotechnology,environmental science, and more.
Health & Biochemistry
The following databases may be especially useful for health, nutrition, and biochemistry topics. You may also be interested in exporing the resources on the following guides: Medicine, Nutrition, Chemistry
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PubMedExplore content in all areas of medicine, health, and life sciences.
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MEDLINE (EBSCOhost)Explore resources related to medicine, nursing, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and more.
Original Research v. Literature Review
Most of the articles you will retrieve from our science databases will either be original research articles or literature reviews. Depending on your research goals or on the parameters of your assignment, you may need to be able to differentiate between these two article types.
Original Research
Original research articles are written to report experimental findings. Original research articles are also known as primary research because the authors have firsthand knowledge of the experment performed and took part it carrying it out. In other words, the authors are writing about their own research. The authors will describe the purpose of their experiment, the hypothesis, how they conducted their study, what results they found, and what the broader implications of their results may be. Original research articles will almost always include Methods and Results sections.
The following are examples of original research articles. Click on a title to open the article in a new tab.
- The structure of foraging activity in colonies of the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex occidentalis
- The nest architecture of the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius
Literature Review
A literature review provides a survey of the known information on a particular subject. The authors synthesize information from multiple sources rather than report on their own experimental research. The headings in a literature review article are topical in nature and do not typically include experimental methods.
The following are examples of literature review articles. Click on a title to open the article in a new tab.
Peer Review
You may have heard your professor stipulate that articles you use in your papers should come from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. Peer review is a vetting process for the publication of research and scholarship. This video explains how the process works and why it is important.
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