University Library > Guides > Biology 200

Biology 200
Writing in Biology

Prof. Kris Curran

Table of Contents:

Search Tips

This Common Search Tips (2:09 minutes, 2.6 MB) tutorial provides an overview of commonly used keyword search tips. Generally, you will start your research with keyword searches, so it is a good idea to memorize these tips. Also, instructions for searching databases, including date and format limits and other searches types, can be found on help screens in the databases.
Sample search in Web of Science:

("african clawed frog*" or xenopus) and "bisphenol a"

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Use Databases to Find Articles

Andersen Library subscribes to many databases that can be used to locate periodical (journal, magazine and newspaper) article, as well as book chapters, dissertations and the like. Online databases are the preferred way to find recent articles. If you need older articles, or cannot find any articles on your topic using online databases, ask a Librarian for assistance. Databases list articles that may or may not be owned by Andersen Library, so you many need to use the Journal Holdings or Citation Linker to find the full text. More about how to find periodicals & articles in the Library is described below.

This tutorial demonstrates How to Access Library Databases (1:36 minutes, 3.3 MB). In brief, select Articles from the Find menu on any University Library webpage. Then,

  • To find a database you know about, click on the link for the first letter of its name under Indexes & Databases in Alphabetical Order
  • To find a list of science databases, click on Science under Indexes & Databases by Subject

It is worthwhile to be both comprehensive and detailed when searching. Be thorough by using synonyms and truncation when there are multiple ways to refer to an idea. Be focused by using "and" to combine different ideas together.

These are some tutorials you can watch to learn how to search in databases:

How do you know whether an article is scholarly or not? Check out the Scholarly Journal v. Popular Magazine Articles guide.

Below are the databases most frequently used for research in the biological sciences. For most topics in this class, start with Biological Abstracts, BioOne, PubMed, and Web of Science. NOTE: These resources are restricted to UW-W students, faculty & staff unless otherwise noted.

AGRICOLA (1970- )
FREE
Produced by the National Agricultural Library, indexes journal articles and other literature covering every major agricultural subject beginning in 1970.

Biological Abstracts (Institute for Scientific Information)  UWW access only  
Indexing and abstracts of journals in the biological sciences.

Biological and Agricultural Index (WilsonWeb : 1983- )  UWW access only  How to Use WilsonWeb
Covers 258 periodicals in the core literature of biology and agriculture.

BioOne  UWW access only
Aggregation of high impact bioscience research journals focused on the biological, ecological and environmental sciences.

General Science Full Text (WilsonWeb : 1984- )  UWW access only  How to Use WilsonWeb
Included in the OmniFile Full Text: Mega Edition database. Indexes and abstracts over 140 English language periodicals in the physical, life, and health sciences plus the full text of over 35 of those periodicals. Includes feature articles, biographical sketches, symposia, conferences, review articles, selected letters to the editor, and supplements to journals. Indexing begins in 1984 and abstracting in March 1993. Full text coverage begins in January 1995.

JSTOR Arts & Sciences I,II, & III Collection  UWW access only  [More Info on JSTOR]  How to Use JSTOR
JSTOR is an electronic journal archival project which provides full-text access to complete runs of back issues of over 550 scholarly journal titles in approximately forty fields.

Medline (EBSCOhost)  UWW access only  [More Ebsco Info]  EBSCOhost Guide
Produced by the National Library of Medicine, Medline covers all aspects of biomedicine including nursing, dentistry and veterinary medicine. It contains citations and abstracts, beginning in 1966, from over 3,800 journals published in the United States and 70 other countries.

Project Muse  UWW access only  [More Info on Project Muse]
Provides access to the full text of 40+ scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.

PubMed
FREE
PubMed is a service of the National Library of Medicine, and includes over 15 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950's. PubMed contains access to bibliographic information that includes MEDLINE, OLDMEDLINE, out-of-scope citations (e.g., articles on plate tectonics or astrophysics) from certain MEDLINE journals, primarily general science and chemistry journals, for which the life sciences articles are indexed for MEDLINE, citations that precede the date that a journal was selected for MEDLINE indexing, as well as some additional life science journals that submit full text to PubMedCentral and receive a qualitative review by NLM.

PubMed Central
FREE
PubMedCentral is a repository for life sciences journals, sponsored by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Access to PMC is free and unrestricted.

ScienceDirect College Edition  UWW access only
Extensive Full Text access to the Elsevier journal collections: Health Sciences (600 peer reviewed journals), Life Sciences (530 peer reviewed journals) and Physical Sciences & Engineering (600 peer reviewed journals).

Science Citation Index (Web of Science: 1987 - )  UWW access only
Multidisciplinary databases of bibliographic information indexed so that you can search for specific articles by subject, author, journal, and/or author address. The information stored about each article includes the article's cited reference list (bibliography), you can also search the databases for articles that cite a known author or work.

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Find Periodicals & Articles in the Library

Most databases have some full text articles in addition to article citations. When an article is not available in that database, use Find It to determine whether and where Andersen Library has a specific article. Watch this How to Use Find It (1:17 minutes, 1.7 MB) online tutorial to see how.

If you are not in a database that uses Find It, use the Journal Holdings List or Citation Linker to determine whether and where Andersen Library has a periodical. How? Check out the How to Use Journal Holdings (1:13 minutes, 2.8 MB) and How to Use the Citation Linker (1:35 minutes, 2.5 MB) online tutorials.

Borrow from Andersen Library

If you are a distance education student who lives more than 30 miles from UW-Whitewater and does not come here for classes, you can use a service called Document Delivery to have books and articles from our print collections sent to you at home. This service is done through ILLiad. It takes about a week to a week and a half for articles to arrive electronically and books arrive through the mail. There is a $1 charge per item for this service. In addition, the library will pay to send you books, but you must pay return postage. This tutorial demonstrates How to Borrow using Document Delivery (2:53 minutes, 7.4 MB).

Borrow from Other Libraries

There is an interlibrary loan service, called ILLiad, which is used to borrow articles, books, videos, government documents, and other materials from libraries around the world. It takes about a week to a week and a half for articles to arrive electronically and books arrive through the mail. It costs $1 per item. See tutorial demonstrates on How to Borrow Articles Using ILLiad (2:20 minutes, 5.9 MB).

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Help

For assistance with any of the resources listed on this page or with other aspects of your research, contact a reference librarian at (262) 472-1032, by email or chat or in person at the Library's Reference Desk.

Last Revised: MS - 11/11/2009