Think about the terms you will enter in the search boxes to describe your topic. Boolean operators -- the words "AND", "OR" and "NOT" -- used in databases (between keywords) make the search more precise - and save time!
Use OR to expand your search (get More results): 1) feed* or ration* or supplement*; 2) cattle or cow or cows or bull or bulls or steer or steers or heifer*; 3) soybean* or soyabean* or glycine max
Use AND to narrow and focus a search (get Fewer results): 1 and 2 and 3 (from above); soil and fertilizer*
Truncate (usually using an asterik *) to find any ending for the word: Be careful of short words, i.e. color* (will also get colorado), pig* (will also get pigment), etc.
Think carefully if use NOT -- you may eliminate important items.
Review your search results & learn from them! A good article? Look at the subject terms or descriptors & use those to revise & improve your search.
Assignments, including for your Poster Presentation, often specify the use of peer-reviewed journals or scholarly journals. Knowing the difference between scholarly journals and popular magazines can be an important factor in completing an assignment successfully.
Some article databases, such as Academic Search Premier, allow you to limit results to scholarly journals. Others, such as JSTOR, offer only scholarly works. It will be up to you to determine whether a particular article is scholarly, as required for most research papers at the collegiate level.
What does "peer-reviewed" mean? Click the question to see...
The peer-review process is a formal way to ensure the quality of research papers. Peer-reviewed literature is also sometimes referred to as "scholarly" "refereed" or, less accurately as, "edited". Next is a link to a video sharing the difference between articles that are scholarly versus popular.
Article indexes allow you to enter terms for your topic and retrieve relevant articles from magazines, newspapers, or scholarly journals.
For your research for SciL 101, it is recommended you use the Web of Science Core Collection, 1900-, listed in the Widely Recognized Sources on the E-Resources & Collections page.
When your research necessitates going deep, to a subject level, use the Databases By Subject list on the E-Resources page. Under Sciences, you will find a listing for Agriculture, Agronomy & Horticulture, and for Ecology & Environmental Sciences, as well as others. Each lists several databases you will want to consider searching. There is some duplication between lists, especially in related areas. The Web of Science is one of the databases listed.
For some of your undergraduate projects, Academic Search Premier, the first database listed under Widely Recognized Sources on the E-Resources page, will suffice. It has both popular and scholarly articles on a variety of topics and covers a wide range of publications.
Once you plug in your search terms & get a list of articles, you can start choosing those that best address your topic. You will notice some have clickable links to the full text, noted as PDF Full Text or Linked Full Text or HTML Full Text or some similar wording.
Don't be discouraged if such a link is not visible for a great sounding article! The University Libraries may have the article -- even electronically. Just use the Find This for Me button, and look for clickable link(s) under Get it for Me. Just remember the number of clicks it takes to see the article can vary. Look at the information presented & follow the links. This Find This for Me information will open in a new Tab, so you will be able to get to your original search results. It may only take a couple of clicks from the Find This for Me button, or it may take several (publisher, journal, volume, issue, article, pdf) to be able to start reading the article.
If the Get it for Me option is Request Delivery the link will take you to the Delivery/ Interlibrary Loan login & after you login to your account, the request form will be pre-populated with at least some of the article information. Complete any other information you can & submit your request.
