1. Familiarize yourself with the jargon and narrow down your topic
Course reserves (including textbooks), required readings, and reference resources (https://libguides.uvic.ca/biology/reference) are a great way to familiarize yourself with a topic.
Once you identify a topic and find some preliminary information, you need to locate more "peer-reviewed" or "scholarly" (www.uvic.ca/library/research/tips/scholvpop/index.php) information.
2. Read the sources located in the preliminary research to determine:
what research questions have been generated from the topic
from what perspective you may approach this topic
3. Find articles using databases
Search using key concepts and keywords in databases like Library Search (https://www.uvic.ca/library/index.php), Google Scholar and Web of Science (https://webapp.library.uvic.ca/databases/details.php?id=80&return=letter__W) databases.
Use the "Search Web of Science (WOS)" (https://libguides.uvic.ca/biology/webofscience) tab of this guide to find journal articles on your topic.
Make an appointment with Monique (https://libcal.uvic.ca/appointments/monique), for more help with starting your research and locating articles.
Reliable, integrated, multidisciplinary research. Information on emerging trends, subject specific content and analysis tools. Includes Science Citation Expanded®, Social Sciences Citation Index®, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index™.
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.
PubAg is a portal to USDA-authored and other highly relevant agricultural research. PubAg covers all of the core topics of the agricultural sciences including nutrition, food safety, food quality, animal and crop production and protection, natural resources, sustainable agricultural systems, rural development, agricultural economic and policy issues, agricultural imports and exports, agricultural statistics, extramural research, and extension education.
full text of articles from over 100 journals dating back to 1986 as well as indexing and abstracts of more than 370 publications. Subject coverage includes agriculture & agricultural research, atmospheric science, biochemistry, biology, biotechnology, botany, chemistry, environmental science, geology, marine biology microbiology, physics and much more.
The Federal Science Library (FSL) is a one-stop, self-serve portal where you can access library services and search the print collections and repositories of seven science-based departments and agencies from a single place. Wherever possible, departmental publications, reports, data sets and other content are freely available for anyone to access or download.
Treesearch indexes publications from all Research Stations of the US Forest Service as well as papers written by the scientists but published in journals, conference proceedings, or books.
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