Bio 196

biology 196: research in biology

core

PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, includes over 16 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950's. These citations are from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources. The database is publicly available and free.

  • Biomedical research on model organisms such as yeast and C. elegans are included.
  • Check out the MEDLINE version of the abstract to locate MeSH terms that might be useful for narrowing a search.

ISI Science Citation Index covers more than 5700 major journals in 164 scientific disciplines from 1989 to the present. About 70% have author-generated abstracts. Search by topic, author, title, group author, year, and address (author affiliation).

  • Search tip: To narrow a list of records, use the Analyze tool.
  • Search tip: Within a record use the Find Related Records button to find articles that share one or more citations with the source article. Articles with many shared citations to the source article may closely match it in subject content.

Biological Abstracts indexes and abstracts articles from more than 4000 life sciences journals from 1969 to the present. Authors supply abstracts for 90% of all new citations. Search by major concepts or concept codes, taxonomic data, chemical name, gene name, sequence terms, CAS registry number, and ISSN number in addition to topic, author, address, and title.

Chemical Abstracts Student Edition covers 260+ journals and 300,000+ dissertations from the full edition of CA. This database is also valuable for searches involving diseases, drugs, and environmental science,

  • Search tip: Best search method for chemicals is by CAS Registry number, including the hyphens. To locate CAS Registry numbers, try these links: ChemFinder.com, Sigma Aldrich Catalog, or these books: Merck Index (Reference 615.103 M555m), CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (Reference 540.202 C111c).
  • Find expert search tips on the expert search page, by clicking on the question mark to the right of the "Indexed In:" line.
  • For help entering punctuation in searches, use Google to search: "chemical abstracts student edition punctuation." The information is near the bottom of the page, so scroll down.

Publishers' Databases

Annual Reviews Online. Although all Annual Review titles are searchable, note that for biology Drew has electronic access to full text 1990+ for Biochemistry , Genetics , Genomics and Human Genetics , Immunology , Medicine , Microbiology , Neuroscience , Nutrition , Plant Biology [formerly Plant Physiology and Plant Molecular Biology], Physiology , Public Health.

  • Search tip: Do a Browse search of our catalog for titles starting Annual Review to find hard copies for years prior to online version for some of these titles.

Science Direct indexes and abstracts more than 2800 journals from the Elsevier (a large publisher of scientific journals) Science Collection. Full text is available for more than 1000 journals.

  • Search tip: Use ! for truncation instead of * .

Wiley Interscience indexes and abstracts their large collection of scholarly scientific journals.

other

Google Scholar has the reputation of being strong in the sciences. It indexes content from scholarly publishers and organizations, university presses, open access journals, digital hosts (such as Ingenta and High Wire Press), BioMedCentral, and PubMed, preprint/reprint services, and government agencies.

  • Set preferences to show Drew Full Text Availability, if desired.
  • Search tips: Use + before a word to include it (+Alzheimers), - before a word to exclude it (not) (-aluminum), enclose phrases in quotation marks "lead paint", and use author:jones and intitle:aluminum to find works by Jones and a citation with aluminum in the title, respectively.

Miscellaneous websites

  • Environmental Protection Agency -- Search for links to reports and articles on environmental issues, such as bioremediation, whales, and hawks.
  • Encyclopedia of Earth is supported by the Environmental Information Coalition and the National Council for Science and the Environment. It contains articles by experts, that are reviewed by experts and includes references for further reading.
  • Hawk Mountain in Eastern Pennsylvania has been collecting data on raptors since the 1930s.
  • NOAA Cetacean Assessment & Ecology Program has information on humpback whales.
  • Scirus is a free, specialized search engine for the sciences developed by Elsevier.

Questions?

Contact Cathy Ryan at x3483 or cgryan@drew.edu.

 

Last updated 09/29/2006 by Cathy Ryan