BIOLOGY 152: Introductory Biology (Fall 2024) : Find Articles

Exploring the UW Library's Introductory Databases list, Top 10 Databases list, and Databases by Subject/Type page are effective ways to locate appropriate databases for finding articles for your Independent Project. 

Databases that have strong, multidisciplinary coverage of many subjects in and beyond the Biosciences are useful starting points, such as:

• Pubmed
• Scopus
• Web of Science
• Google Scholar

Databases with focused coverage of a particular discipline can help you explore your subject thoroughly, such as:

• Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Database
• CAB Abstracts (Biological & Veterinary)
• CINAHL Plus (Nursing and Allied Health Literature)
• FSTA: Food Science & Technology Abstracts
• PsychInfo
• Wildlife and Ecology Studies Worldwide

1. To find the full text of an article, look for a full text link on the database page. 
2. If there is not a full text link directly from the database page, click on the red 'Find it at UW-Madison' link. This searches all of the Libraries' databases to see if we have the full text, and if so, provide links to those databases.
3. If it's still not available, there will be a link to request a copy. A librarian will find the article and send it to you for free!

If you are a mentored student, the research you are doing with your PI is new investigation, and you likely will not be able to find individual research papers that encompass every aspect of your topic. Instead, you can find information by assembling a collection of articles that help you answer questions like:

• What studies led up to the study you are working on? 
• What needed to be discovered to make your work possible? 
• What do you need to know to understand your project? 

Don't look for information that encompasses every aspect of the research. You won't find that!

• Search separately for each aspect of the research topic.
• Look for background information about the species, biological functions, and/or methodologies.
• Find out what larger systems your specific research topic fits into. Ex: this is a type of what?
• Work backwards from the specific to the general. Ex: use MeSH Medical Subject Headings to find broader subject headings.
• If your mentor gave you articles to read, search for each one separately and then use the "related articles" database function.
• Search for the articles that are cited by the papers your mentor gave you.
• Look at the Times Cited articles to find articles that cite the papers your mentor gave you.
• Find other articles by the same authors that wrote the papers your mentor gave you.
• Look for articles on each aspect of your mentor's research separately.