Subject
Research Guides
Biology:
BI490: Codes, Mixed Messages, and Cellular Chaos:
Nucleic Acids in Cancer Progression, Diagnostics, and Treatment.
- BI 490 Subject Research Guide
- How to Identify a Research Study
- Helpful hints: Searching for Citations and for Full Text Articles
- Identifying and using primary (original) source materials in the sciences
- Hints for Evaluating Web Sites
Helpful hints: Searching for Citations and for Full Text Articles
I. Boolean Operators
General Tips:
Use OR to connect similar terms. OR broadens your search. Example: cancer or oncology – will return hits with either or both terms.
Use AND to connect separate concepts. AND narrows your search. Example: radiation and chemotherapy—will only return hits that contain both terms.
Use NOT to eliminate separate concepts. NOT narrows your search. Example: radiation not chemotherapy—will only return hits that contain radiation BUT NOT chemotherapy.
Truncating Terms:
Use * to replace one or more characters within or at the end of a search term. Example: drug* (retrieves drug, drugs, druggist), wom*n (retrieves women and woman).
"Quotation Marks"
Enclosing specific phrases in quotation marks will direct the search engine to search the database for documents containing that exact phrase. A search for breast cancer (without quotes) will return any document containing analytical and chemist with anything in between. If you place quotes around the phrase, searching for "breast cancer", your hits will only include documents with the terms right next to each other.
II. Searching specific science databases
- PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=helppubmed.section.pubmedhelp.Searching_PubMed#pubmedhelp.A_basic_search PubMed offers brief guided tutorials in basic searching by title, author, and date. The help page also explains how to expand or narrow results through choice of search terms and types of media. - Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html
Google Scholar’s “scholar help” can be accessed from the link above, or by clicking on the “scholar help” link to the right of the search box on the Google Scholar main page. The help page describes how Google Scholar is organized and explains the components of each search result with the aid of visual diagrams. - HighWire Press
http://highwire.stanford.edu/help/search_help.dtl
Highwire Press offers excellent tips on search techniques like stemming, wildcards, Boolean operators, and the use of capitalization and punctuation. It can be located using the link above, or from the “help” tab along the top of the site’s main page. - Science Direct
http://www.sciencedirect.com/
Using the horizontal navigation bar at the top left of the main page, click on “Help.” A pop-up screen with a table of contents on the left appears. The table of contents contains multiple help options, such as searching journals, refining a search, recalling a search, etc. The body of the help page also includes links to online tutorials that guide the user through the site’s functionality. - Health Reference Center
http://find.galegroup.com/itx/start.do?prodId=HRCA&userGroupName=mlin_m_pine
Along the top left of the main page, immediately below the heading “Health Reference Center Academic” there is a “help” option. Clicking on this brings up a pop-up screen with a table of contents along the left. This guide provides tips on how to execute basic and advanced searches. Health Reference Center is actually a collection of multiple databases, and the guide explains how users can expand and restrict the databases covered by a search.
III. Using the Boston Public Library and Google Scholar
If you have a Boston Public Library card, you can use it to search even more databases than we have here at Pine Manor. Start by going to the library’s homepage, www.BPL.org , and click the square for “Electronic Resources,” or you can link to the Electronic Resources page right here:
http://bpl.org/electronic/index.htmAnother way to find citations (and sometimes full–text) is by using Google Scholar. The advanced search features make it easy to limit your search to find just the most relevant articles and citations.
http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?hl=en&lr=You can use Google Scholar even if you don’t have a BPL card, but if you have one, log in using your library card’s bar code number. Google Scholar will then automatically link you to articles available full text through the BPL
http://ezproxy.bpl.org/login?url=http://scholar.google.com/