Cellular & Molecular Biology Graduate Student Welcome Guide : Literature Searching

Getting Full Text Articles & Book Chapters

Follow (Find It button) or the "Find It at UW Madison" link in most databases to:

access online full text (when available)
see if the journal or book is available in print if it is not accessible online
request a free pdf of the article or book chapter if full text is not available online (Request a Copy)

If you already have a citation, use this Citation Search to search for your article.

Citation Search

Locate articles when you have a citation using Citation Search.

Laboratory Protocols & Methods

The UW-Madison Libraries provide access to many collections of published laboratory protocols and methods.

Visit our Laboratory Protocols & Methods research guide to learn more

Literature searching

As a researcher at UW-Madison, you have access to a wealth of information! We subscribe to thousands of journals and hundreds of databases, and we have a vast print collection. This page will help you search for articles and journals in your research area, and locate the full text. Don't be stopped by paywalls; if you can't find the article in our collections, we can almost always get you a copy through interlibrary loan.

Please contact us if you need assistance. We can help you construct efficient searches, set alerts, find full text of articles, and identify journals for publishing your work.

AskSEL@library.wisc.edu

Searching Databases

You can access databases from the library home page. Use the dropdown menu at the Catalog button to navigate to Databases. We subscribe to many databases that index scientific literature.

There are several ways to access databases:

1) Search by the title of the database (for example, 'PubMed')

2) Use the Browse by Subject/Type page to discover databases that index literature on your research topic

3) Visit the Top 10 Databases page to access commonly used databases.

The databases listed below are popular starting points for most science topics:

Google Scholar
Accessing Google Scholar (a free public resource) through our link will help you bypass paywalls.
PubMed
Accessing PubMed (a free public database) through our link will help you bypass paywalls.
Scopus
Large, multidisciplinary database that covers science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Includes tools to track, analyze, and visualize research.
Web of Science
A collection of databases that index the world’s leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, as published in journals, conference proceedings, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions across the globe.

Citation Managers

Citation Managers such as EndNote, EndNote Basic, Mendeley, or Zotero are software tools for managing your citations. Citation Managers will help you:

Create and organize a personal research database
Download citations from online databases
Format bibliographies and citations in papers
Share your citations with others