Databases - Journal Articles and Conference Proceedings
Multidisciplinary
- ScopusScopus is a curated abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, and features tools to track, analyze and visualize research. This resource delivers a comprehensive overview of the world’s research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities. Scopus allows users to search the literature, follow citations, and see who cited an article. Researchers can also use Scopus metrics to help demonstrate the value of their work.
- Web of scienceWeb of Science provides users access to integrated, multidisciplinary research with sizable search and navigation options. Web of Science can connect users with over 12,000 journals worldwide, including open-access journals.
Biology-Specific
- Environment completeThis resources offers patrons full-text access to over 1,300 journals and monographs in areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, and related areas of study, as well regular access to more than 2,500 domestic and international journals.
- Wildlife & Ecology Studies WorldwideWildlife & Ecology Studies Worldwide is the largest index to literature about wild mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. It covers many wildlife subjects including individual species, habitat types, wildlife behavior, ecotourism and zoology. Coverage dates back to 1892 and continues up to the present day.
Databases - Newspaper and Magazine Articles (additional resources for extra-credit paper)
- Newspaper Source PlusNewspaper Source Plus includes more than 860 full-text newspapers, providing more than 35 million full-text articles. In addition, the database features more than 857,000 television and radio news transcripts.
- Nexis UniNexis Uni provides access to news, legal, and business sources including journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs, newspapers, and legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes.
- Gale In Context: Opposing ViewpointsOpposing Viewpoints In Context covers today's hottest social issues, from Offshore Drilling to Climate Change, Health Care to Immigration. Helps students research, analyze and organize a broad variety of data for conducting research, completing writing assignments, preparing for debates, creating presentations and more. Includes pro/con essays topic overviews primary source documents biographies of social activists and reformers court-case overviews periodical articles statistical tables, charts and graphs images podcasts, including weekly presidential addresses and premier NPR programs and a national and state curriculum standards search, correlated to the content that allows educators to quickly identify material by grade and discipline. Dates of Coverage: Current
Primary and Secondary Sources
Often when doing a research assignment, you are required to use only primary or secondary sources. What is the difference between them?
Primary sources in science are based on first-hand observation, experimentation, or modeling and report new research or findings. Examples of primary sources are:
- a journal article reporting new findings from a laboratory
- a report on new findings from a wildlife management study
- the handwritten instructions for how to do a new lab procedure
Secondary sources analyze and interpret primary sources. These are examples in science:
- an article reviewing the last 10 years of published research about penguins (often called a review article or literature review)
- a book about the discovery of DNA structure
- a movie about the life of Charles Darwin
When searching for articles, you can find a primary source by adding [study] to your search terms and can find a secondary source by adding [review] to your search terms. These terms appear in the abstracts of the journal articles.