Guide to Library Research in Science

Lesson 7: Finding Citations to Articles in Periodicals

Journal articles are usually considered the most important primary source of information in science, serving to establish intellectual property, evaluate work through the peer-review process, and provide a vehicle for disseminating information. Bibliographic databases index and provide access to the enormous quantity of science information published in widely dispersed primary literature.

This lesson provides access to extensive information on finding periodical articles, including descriptions of science databases and search systems, and tutorials and help screens describing the structure and search techniques for the many science databases available at The College.

The College of Wooster subscribes to more than more than 175 databases that provide a means of finding bibliographic, numeric, directory, image, or full-text information by connecting to electronic storage and retrieval systems. An alphabetical listing of these databases is available at the Databases by Title page. Selected Databases for Research in Science provides descriptions of relevant science databases, their search interface, dates of coverage, and a link to the search screen. In addition, the Subject Guides page for each discipline includes a listing of suggested databases for research in that field.

Discipline-specific databases for the sciences are created by database producers such as BIOSIS, Chemical Abstracts Service, Institute of Electrical Engineers, and others. Vendors lease these databases and make the information available by controlling the mechanics of interaction with the host computer. The search systems associated with different vendors vary in complexity and flexibility, with some designed to be very user-friendly while others are intended for expert searchers. See Science Database Search Systems for descriptions of some of the search interfaces used at The College.

As discussed in Lesson 5: Search Strategies and Techniques in this guide, it is always a good idea to take a few minutes to plan your search strategy to ensure optimum results. Although there are certain common features that apply to most databases and search systems, each database was created by a different database producer to address a specific need in a particular discipline. Online help is available within each search system and database, as outlined below.

OSearch is the search system for the OhioLINK research databases. The Help screens provide detailed descriptions of how to carry out search functions and use other features of the system, including selecting and combining terms, searching specific fields, linking to full text, limiting and sorting results, using a thesaurus and more. A video tutorial is also available, as well as a text/image version of the tutorial. In addition to the general help documentation provided for the OSearch system, each of the OhioLINK research databases has a database description page that provides information on specific features of that database. Information may include field tags and indexing categories unique to that database. The following links take you to documentation for science databases using the OSearch search system. BIOSIS Previews COMPENDEX GeoRef INSPEC EBSCOhost provides access to a wide variety of databases including general reference collections and subject-specific databases as well as collections of full text articles. The online help is organized like a book, with chapters and pages, and covers search functions common to all of the databases in the collection. EBSCOhost also provides a series of three- to four-minute animated tutorials to guide users through basic and advanced search techniques. In addition, EBSCOhost provides database help specific to each database in the system. Clicking on the Help link provides very detailed documentation for each database in the EBSCOhost system. FirstSearch is the interface used by databases provided through OCLC. Clicking on the Help button from the search page in any FirstSearch database links to documentation for searching the FirstSearch interface, as well as to specific information about the particular database you are searching. ISI Web of Science provides a tutorial that will give you an overview of the features of the three multidisciplinary citation databases including Science Citation Index Expanded. SciFinder is a database search interface that provides access to chemical, biomedical, engineering, materials science, and agricultural science information and patents indexed in the Chemical Abstracts Service suite of databases, and in MEDLINE, produced by the National Library of Medicine. The new Web version of SciFinder requires each individual user to register. See Introduction to the Web Version of SciFinder for more information about registering and accessing SciFinder, and links to Help documentation. Entrez is the integrated search and retrieval system for PubMed and the biosequence databases created and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Detailed documentation for the search system is locate at Entrez Help Document. NCBI provides an excellent animated tutorial demonstrating how to search PubMed using the Entrez system. In addition to this comprehensive tutorial, the National Library of Medicine offers a series of animated Quick Tours, each of which focuses on a single search technique in PubMed. See the NCBI Education page for access to other excellent tutorials on searching and analyzing the information in the bioinformatics databases at NCBI.