There are a lot of databases and search engines to choose from when looking for articles. Figuring out which one is the most appropriate can be a challenge. Here are some common databases that might be useful for this course.
Web of Science indexes core journal articles, conference proceedings, data sets, and other resources in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. It also includes access to EndNote Online.
PubMed comprises more than 37 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. MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) is the largest component of PubMed and consists primarily of journal citations; articles indexed with MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and curated with funding, genetic, chemical and other metadata.
In the above section, you see we put “climate change” and “global warming” in quotes. Doing this in your search will bring back only that exact phrase.
There are a few different ways to use truncation symbols or “wildcards” to search for different forms of a word. Here’s an example:
A search for gene* will bring back all these words:
But beware! Make sure you put your wildcard character in just the right spot. The same search will also bring back these words:
See more about what truncation can do for you in this great tutorial from Colorado State.
You can use nesting (parentheses) to help organize a more complicated search. For example, you could search for:
“genetically modified” AND (crop* OR food) NOT (corn OR maize)
to get results about genetically modified food or crops that do not talk about corn, aka maize.
