LibGuides: BSC 6840: Professional Development in Biology: Finding Articles

Finding Articles

The key to finding articles is taking the time to initially investigate your topic, determining your focus and then creating a search strategy based on your research question.

"There are many strategies that you may employ when looking for information in a database. When starting your search, it is important to plan out your search strategy in advance, and follow these 4 important steps to insure that you receive the results that you are looking for." (Berry College, 2020)

1. Define your topic (write a few sentences that explain what you are looking for)
2. Choose keywords (select keywords from your sentences)
3. Group like keywords together
4. Decide how groups of keywords are related.

Berry College. (2020). Search Strategies: Tips for Working with Databases: Creating Search Terms. https://libguides.berry.edu/searchstrategies

When finding articles, saving them and managing where they have been found can be a chore. Using Citation and Source Managers like Zotero make this easier.

Journal - Article - Databases

Biological Abstracts (Clarivate) This link opens in a new window
Now part of Web of Science, Biological Abstracts is a complete collection of bibliographic references covering life science and biomedical research literature published from more than 4,000 journals internationally. This database provides users with access to the latest information in virtually every life science discipline
Biological Science Collection (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
The collection contains biological science related full-text articles and the entire range of bibliographic records from Biological Sciences database. Supporting over two dozen areas of expertise, Biological Sciences provides access to literature from serials, as well as conference proceedings, technical reports, monographs and selected books and patents.
Coastal Zone Information Collection (CZIC) This link opens in a new window
Full text access to NOAA Coastal Services Center's Coastal Zone Information Collection (CZIC), which contains more than 5,000 coastal related documents over 30 years.
ScienceDirect (Elsevier) This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive electronic collection of scholarly science, technology and medicine full text and bibliographic information.
Web of Science (Clarivate) This link opens in a new window
The Web of Science contains several databases:
-Web of Science Core Collection
-Biological Abstracts
-KCI-Korean Journal Database
-MEDLINE
-Preprint Citation Index
-ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index
-SciELO Citation Index
Dissertations and Theses Global (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
With more than 2 million entries, PQD&T is the single, central, authoritative resource for information about doctoral dissertations and master's theses. Dissertations published from 1980 forward include 350-word abstracts written by the author. Master's theses published from 1988 forward include 150-word abstracts. UMI offers over 1.8 million titles for purchase in microfilm or paper formats. More than 600,000 are available in native or image PDF formats for immediate free download.