Searching the Biological Literature

Develop your hypothesis based on the lecture or your reading of the chapter of the textbook. You can then search for a peer reviewed article that supports your hypothesis and your experiment.

Searching for an article

Pre-research: Read assignment. From that assignment, get to know your topic. Look through textbook and assignment and look for keywords. Know what they mean. Write down keywords. If you find a term and do not know what it means, look in:

The assigned chapter or glossary of textbook, a dictionary or encyclopedia of biological terms, library database Credo Reference: subject “Science” (look under A-Z list of Databases), Google Books: Subject “science/life sciences/biology/general”

Brainstorm keywords. Here are some keywords taken from textbook that might be useful for “Lab 2: Evolution of Populations” assignment:

Natural selection

Genetic drift

Evolution

Traits

Frequency

Population

Environment

Predation

Genetics

Population genetics

Microevolution

Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium

Bottleneck effect

Gene flow

Variation

Camouflage

Identify resources to find peer reviewed scholarly articles. Search for peer-reviewed articles in:

library databases (limit to peer reviewed if you can): Academic Search Premier, Science Direct, Agricola

GoogleScholar

Look for research databases suggest above. Go to the library homepage (http://www.framingham.edu/wlibrary) and select the link “A-Z list of Databases”. Below are examples of some general searches in these databases.

Questions? Email Millie Gonzalez vgonzalez@framingham.edu Page 1

Searching the Biological Literature

Here is an example of a search in Academic Search Premier:

Here is an example of a search in Science Direct:

Here is an example of a search in Agricola:

Questions? Email Millie Gonzalez vgonzalez@framingham.edu Page 2

Searching the Biological Literature

Here is a search in GoogleScholar:

Remember go to the GoogleScholar link on the A-Z list of databases on the library homepage. Follow these instructions on how to make Framingham State a preferred library within GoogleScholar.

Questions? Email Millie Gonzalez vgonzalez@framingham.edu Page 3

Searching the Biological Literature

http://whittemorelibrary.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/try-google-scholar/

Here is how to search for books in the library catalog:

Remember you need your library card to check out books from this and other libraries.

If you have a citation and would like to know if article is available online full text, enter title of journal in Full Text Journal Finder (link found on library homepage).

If you would like to check if a journal is peer reviewed, go to the A-Z list of Databases and search for the journal in Ulrich’s Periodical Directory.

Questions? Email Millie Gonzalez vgonzalez@framingham.edu Page 4