Top Databases for Developmental Biology
Wikipedia and Google Scholar should only be starting points for your research. Wikipedia entries are not reliable sources because they aren't reviewed rigorously, but the references and external links may be helpful to you. Google Scholar contains scholarly articles, but not from all scholarly journals that are published. That's why you should search in the databases listed below as well as Google Scholar to be certain you get good coverage of your topic. Have fun searching!
- 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.
- MEDLINEMEDLINE via EBSCOhost authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from current biomedical journals. Included are citations from Index Medicus, International Nursing Index, Index to Dental Literature, HISTLINE, SPACELINE, PREMEDLINE®, AIDSLINE®, BIOETHICSLINE®, and HealthSTAR®. Dates of Coverage: Varies by publication
- 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.
- 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.
Google Scholar Library Links
Learn how to activate the Library Links in Google Scholar so you can navigate directly to full text articles available through the UNT Libraries.
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.
What is Peer Review?
Many instructors require you to use peer-reviewed sources for your papers and projects, but what does that mean?
- Peer review is the process of having experts in a field review the quality of an article or book before it is published
- Most articles in scholarly and academic journals are peer-reviewed
- Books published by university or academic presses are peer-reviewed
Most databases allow you to limit your search to peer-reviewed articles. Here are two examples:
- Academic search completeCheck the "Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals" box under "Limit Your Results"
- Research librarySelect "peer-reviewed" beneath the search box.
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