Where to search:

NOTE: Each of these first three databases have strengths in different biological disciplines. Ask your instructor which is best for your research!

Biological Abstracts - bibliographic information and full text access for scholarly research published in biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, botany, biomedicine, pharmacology, zoology, agriculture, and veterinary medicine. This database is accessible to you as an Alfred University student.

OR

PubMed - bibliographic information and some full text access for scholarly research published on biomedicine and life science. This database is free and maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine.

OR

AGRICOLA - an online database including scholarly articles that covers agriculture and related fields such as biology, animal and veterinary science, entomology, plant science, forestry, farming, agricultural economics, food, human nutrition, earth and environmental sciences. This is a free to access database, but as a student you have access to an enhanced search interface.

OR

Search Google Scholar. A freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. This is most useful for searching for specific articles, when looking for full-text access because it is also more difficult to narrow down to a specific subject area.

OR

Search the entire library catalog using Primo. This search engine is less specific and allows you to search all of the books and most of the articles held in the library or through our website and databases. You will need to filter the results to only show scholarly articles and add subject filters for Biology.

Filter for peer-review

If your search results contain articles that are not peer-reviewed, you can use filters built into Primo or library databases to narrow down to just peer-reviewed articles. This is really simple, just click the box!

Filter icons for limiting search results to Peer-Reviewed articles in Primo.

Identify Bibliographic Information

Now that you have a set of search results, you can select the article that is most appropriate for you by reading the abstract or description of the article. After identifying the article that you will be using, you will want to identify some basic bibligraphic information:

Author name(s)
Article title
Journal title and volume/issue
Publication date

This information will be listed in the database and will be what you need to create a citation, find the article again in the future, and request it if necessary.