Guides: BIO 491: Senior Seminar: Find Sources

Forming your Search String

The more complicated your question, the less likely a search engine can understand it. To get the best result, identify keywords and like terms to create a search string.

Example research question: How does the presence of LRRK2 gene mutations predict the onset of Parkinson's disease?

Keywords: LRRK2, Parkinson's disease

Like terms can include synonyms and also examples of your keywords. If you don't get results from searching your keywords, it doesn't mean that the research doesn't exist. It could mean that the researcher used different language to describe the same topic

LRRK2: leucine rich repeat kinase 2, dardarin
Parkinson's disease: Parkinson's*

Search strings connect your keywords and like terms together for the best results.

Too many results? Use AND to narrow results

LRRK2 AND Parkinson's disease

Too few results? Use OR to broaden results or use a * to search for anything beginning with that term

LRRK2 OR leucine rich repeat kinase 2 AND Parkinson*

Find Ancestor & Descendant Articles

Use peer-reviewed articles that you've found to discover more research that preceded and followed it.

Ancestor Articles

Ancestor articles came before your article and were used by the authors to form their research. They are located in

Footnotes
References
- Many digital articles have links within their references to other articles
- If not, search for articles by journal title in Journal Finder.

Descendant Articles

Descendant articles came after your article and cite your article in their research. They can be found

Links to "Cited by" in certain databases
By searching for your article in Google Scholar and following the cited by link.

students reading in front of periodical display

Also known as peer-reviewed articles, scholarly articles are sources that are:

written by experts in the field
reviewed by other experts in the field (hence the peer-reviewed)
intended for an academic audience

While you can find scholarly articles through general search engines, databases contain a feature where you can narrow your results to only scholarly articles.

Find Subject-Specific Articles:

BioOne Complete This link opens in a new window
Search and browse bioscience research journals published by small societies and other not-for-profit organizations. BioOne Complete is an initiative to provide access to journals focused on the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences.
Medline This link opens in a new window
Created by the United States National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE is an authoritative bibliographic database containing citations and abstracts for biomedical and health journals used by health care professionals, nurses, clinicians and researchers.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
For search by Publication Type, see PubMed's subject term guide: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/pubtypes.html
Science Database This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Science Database is a growing resource of 7.3 million full text articles from over 1,600 sources. In full-text format, researchers have access to all the charts, diagrams, graphs, tables, photos, and other graphical elements so vital to scientific and engineering literature.

Find Articles in Multidisciplinary Databases:

Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Ultimate offers access to resources cited in key subject indexes. The combination of academic journals, magazines, periodicals, reports, books and videos meets the needs of scholars in virtually every discipline ranging from astronomy, anthropology, biomedicine, engineering, health, law and literacy to mathematics, pharmacology, women’s studies, zoology and more.
Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
Provides millions of articles from over 17,000 scholarly journals and other authoritative sources—including thousands of podcasts and transcripts from NPR and CNN as well as videos from BBC Worldwide Learning. Includes extensive coverage in key subject areas such as biology, chemistry, economics, environmental science, history, marketing, political science, and psychology.

Student thumbing through a book in front of library stacks

Books and eBooks often provide a broader overview and cover more information than a scholarly journal article.

You don't need to read an entire book to use it in your research. Use the index at the back of a book to find the information you need.

To find books and eBooks, you can either:

Search the NOBLE catalog

NOBLE Catalog Search
Search the Jenks Library catalog for books, eBooks, audiobooks, scores, etc.

Browse the stacks for a book related to your topic

QH301-705.5 Biology (General)

QH359-425 Evolution

QH426-470 Genetics

QH471-489 Reproduction

QH501-531 Life

QH540-549.5 Ecology

QH573-671 Cytology

QH705-705.5 Economic biology

Agricola
Bibliographic records of resources for agriculture and related disciplines.
Center for Disease Control & Prevention
The leading national public health institute of the United States. It provides information about infectious diseases, food borne pathogens, environmental health, occupational safety and health, health promotion, and injury prevention primarily for the health and protection of the U.S., but it contains a lot of high-level information about diseases.
Environmental Protection Agency
Programs, publications, databases, laws and regulations
Fish & Wildlife Service
portals to information on birds, contaminants, endangered species, fisheries, fishing, and more
National Center for Biotechnology Information
A national resource for molecular biology information
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Online exhibits in Anthropology, Botany, Entomology, Invertebrate Zoology, Mineral Sciences, Paleobiology, Vertebrate Zoology
Nature Serve
Information about rare and endangered species and threatened ecosystems
NOAA Fisheries
Programs supporting the conservation and management of living marine resources.
Patuxent
Migratory bird research and more.
Plants Database
Information on plants in the United States and its territories, including species abstracts, crop information, plant symbols, and more.
Science.gov
Gateway to reliable information about science and technology from across federal government organizations, including technical reports, journal citations, databases, federal Web sites and fact sheets.
WorldWideScience.org
A global science gateway for federated searching of national and international scientific databases and portals.

If you find an article or book that you can't access, don't pay for it! Instead, submit an Interlibrary Loan request, and you'll receive articles within a few days!

Interlibrary Loan: Article & Book Request
Can't find the article or book you're looking for at Gordon? Fill out the Interlibrary Loan request form and we'll track the article or book down for you!

Are you looking for a specific article, like an article that you found referenced in a bibliography? Search for the journal in Journal Finder, linked below:

Browse Journal Finder
Find individual journals and search within specific publications.