Selected Resources for Graduate Students in Botany : Research Articles, Data, and More

Browse this guide to identify library resources to support your research and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Related Interest Guides

Digital Collections, Data, Imagery

Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR)
Genetic and molecular biology data for the model higher plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Comprehensive digital collection of legacy literature of biodiversity.
Botanicus
Freely accessible encyclopedia of digitized historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library.
Botany Department Teaching Collection
Description of Plant Viruses
Freely-available information resource to viruses, viroids and satellites of plants, fungi and protozoa, with some additional data on related animal viruses.
JSTOR Global Plants
Community-contributed database where herbaria worldwide share more than two million high-resolution images of plant type specimens and related information.
Plant Humanities Initiative, Plant Humanities Lab
Explore cultural histories of plants, influences and uses by human societies.
PLANTS Database
Provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories.

Searching the Research Literature

As a researcher at UW-Madison, you have access to a true wealth of information! We subscribe to thousands of journals, hundreds of databases, and maintain a vast print collection. This page provides suggestions for finding (and retrieving) articles from journals within your discipline. Do not be stopped by paywalls! If you are unable to find the article in our collections, we can almost always obtain a copy through our Interlibrary Loan service.

Please contact us if you need assistance. We can help you to construct efficient searches, set alerts, retrieve full text of articles and identify journals in which to publish. AskSEL@library.wisc.edu

Selecting and Searching Databases by Subject or Type

Select databases from the library home page (library.wisc.edu). Use dropdown menu from Catalog button to go to Databases. OR, select the database link from the Find page.

There are several ways to browse and to select databases:

1) Search by name of the database (for example, "Biological Abstracts").

2) Use Browse by Subject/Type to choose databases that find articles (and more) in a subject area.

3) Visit Top 10 Databases or Introductory to choose from a selection of popular databases.

Note: An "Articles Search" can also be run from the library home page. The Articles Search runs a search within several databases simultaneously. Apply filters by date, source, document type, (and more).

Consider the databases listed, below, for conducting your search of the research literature.

Biological Abstracts
Indexing more than 4000 journals, database covers all aspects of biology including bacteriology, cell biology, genetics, microbiology, pathology, physiology, toxicology, virology, and more.
BioOne
Access to peer-reviewed research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences as indexed by more than 200 research titles of leading scientific societies, institutions, museums, and presses.
CAB Abstracts
Comprehensive database of the applied life sciences including animal and crop production, environmental impacts, nutrition, and veterinary science.
Ecology Abstracts
Provides searchable access to some 350 research journals in ecology; a sub-set database of the Agriculture and Environmental Science Database.
Google Scholar
Multi-disciplinary search engine to scholarly articles.
Note: Accessing Google Scholar through our libraries will help you to bypass paywalls (i.e retrieve more full-text through our subscriptions).
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
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, and more. Includes citation network data.

Getting to Full Text

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 is available in print (Library Catalog)
request a copy of the article (PDF) if full text is not available online (Request a Copy link)

If you already have a citation, use Citation Search to find the article.

Citation Managers

Citation Managers (EndNote, EndNote Web, Mendeley, and Zotero) are software tools for managing your citation records. Citation Managers will help you:

Create and organize a personal research database,
Download citations from online databases,
Format reference lists and in-text citations for papers or thesis manuscript, and
Share your citation lists with others.