A presentation given on February 1, 2008, to the faculty and graduate students of the U of I Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department by Dr. Katie Newman, Biotechnology Librarian: florador [at] uiuc.edu.
Links to seminar handouts:
Selected Journal Indexes for Molecular Biology
& Biotechnology Topics & A Quick Reference Guide to Online Bio-Ag-Vet-Medical Resources at
the U of Illinois
Where to search for information
about an ABE topic, biofuels -- Database retrieval comparison
Introducing RefWorks
Maximizing
the Impact of Your Research -- Open Access
Biotechnology Information Center
Funk Family Library for Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences
Online Rese
arch Resources (ORR) --
E-journals and more
From the Library's "ORR" (Online Research Resource) find out if the U of I has an electronic
subscription to a journal.
Journal and Article Locator
Use this link if you know the name of the journal and the citation information such as
volume, year, pagination.
Library Catalog
Search to determine if the U of I owns a book (or journal). Faculty, staff, and graduate
students may request delivery of books to their office / departmental office / nearby library.
Easy Search
From the
main Gateway page, or from the
Easy Search window,
perform a simultaneous search of many databases at once. More resources being added to the
simultaneous search function, soon.
Interlibrary Loan
If the University doesn't have the book or journal article that you need, request it! We
want you to have the resources that you need. Delivery of journal articles is frequently faster
than 7 days.
Biotechnology Information Center
ABE "Useful Links"
(produced by the Funk Library)
Major ABE Journals (put together by the Funk Library)
Note: "Discover" links have been implemented in most of these resources. Click on the Discover link to access the full text of articles. If the article is not locally available, use the Interlibrary Loan link in the Discover window to request the article. Read more about "Discover".
Tip: Never rely solely on any one database! Take a look at a comparison of the number of articles on "Biofuels" contained in many of the resources listed below.
AGRICOLA
Worldwide coverage of agricultural research. Print equivalent:
Bibliography of Agriculture. Indexes over 1000 journals, plus other agricultural
resources. Many records contain abstracts. Updated monthly. Locally available: 1942-1970 in print;
1970- present, online. [WebSPIRS] Try also
AGRIS (international Ag) and
CAB Abstracts.
Biological Abstracts
Biological Abstracts provides abstracts of research in biological literature, including
biochemistry, biology, botany, ecology, zoology, microbiology, medicine, etc. Coverage:
1926-present. Updated every 2 weeks.
BA indexes about 6000 research journals. [Web of Knowledge]
CAB Abstracts
The largest database for worldwide coverage of all agricultural research including
engineering, forestry, veterinary medicine, & biological information. Indexes and abstracts
over 10,000 journals, selectively. Available online: 1907 - present. Updated quarterly. [Web of
Knowledge] Try also
Agricola and
AGRIS.
Compendex (part of Engineering
Village, EiVillage)
Worldwide engineering index covers all areas of engineering including environmental
technology and biotechnology. Indexes over 5000 journals. Includes abstracts. Coverage is 1884 -
present. Updated weekly. [EiVillage]
CRIS
The USDA's Current Research Information System. It documents ongoing and recently completed
research in agriculture, food, and nutrition. Free access.
CSA Technology Research
Worldwide engineering index covers all areas of engineering including biomaterials and waste
engineering. Indexes over 4000 journals, conference proceedings, technical reports, patents.
Coverage is 1962-present; updated monthly. [CSA]
Dissertation Abstracts (ProQuest digital dissertations)
Identifies doctoral dissertations from U.S. & Canadian institutions. In many cases the
full text for recent dissertations is available. Coverage: 1861-present; updated monthly.
Environmental Sciences &
Pollution Management
Includes the following databases, which may be searched individually, or together as one
database:
When searched collectively, Environmental Sciences indexes over 4000 journals. Most subfiles are updated monthly. Check the U of Illinois Catalog for the availability of the earlier, print versions. [CSA]
Faculty of 1000
Particularly useful for graduate students and young scientists, this biology research tool
highlights significant or controversial papers based on the recommendations of over 2,300 leading
scientists, who pick new papers to review and comment on the significance of the papers. Reviewed
papers date from 1999-present, for the most part.
FSTA
Cover all aspects of food science and technology, e.g. food processing, ingredients
technology, food industry environmental issues and biotechnology. Indexes over 1800 journals;
updated quarterly. Coverage: 1969 - present. [Web of Knowledge]
GeoREF
A deriva tive of the American Geological Institute's geoscience database. It includes
geological records of North America from 1785 to the present, as well as geological records of the
world since 1933. [CSA]
Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)
Searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints,
abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. Searches a variety of undisclosed
academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities as well as
scholarly articles available across the web. Enabled with U of I's "Discover" links to allow you to
access the full text of many of the articles. A popular feature links to papers that cited the
target paper. Note: Use
Zotero - a free Firefox plugin from
zotero.org - to help export multiple citations at once to
EndNote or
RefWorks.
INSPEC
This source identifies information from the fields of computing, control engineering,
electronics, manufacturing and mechanical engineering, operations research, environmental science,
geophysics, nanotechnology, biomedical technology and biophysics.among others. Coverage:
1969-present; updated weekly. [EiVillage]
PubMed (Medline)
The major index for articles in biomedical journals published world-wide; topics include
clinical and experimental medicine, basic sciences as related to biochemistry, medicine,
psychiatry, public health and veterinary medicine; indexes over 5,000 journals; includes abstracts;
1950s - present. Updated daily. Freely available to all, but use the U of Illinois' URL (http://www.library.uiuc.edu/orr/get.php?instid=406312)
to see which full text articles are available for the U of I. [PubMed]
SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts)
Use
SciFinder Scholar to search
Chemical Abstracts, which indexes "chemistry" in the broadest sense. Updated daily.
Indexes & abstracts over 8000 journals. Coverage: 1907-present. Has cited & citing
references from 1995-present.
Note: This resource is not web-based; it is only available for those who have loaded the
SciFinder client program. For instructions for obtaining access to this program, go to the
SciFinder Scholar at UIUC page.
Scopus
Scopus is the largest science index, indexing over 2,500 social science and 11,000 science
journals as well as millions of web sites. Particularly strong in medicine, with citations you
won't find in PubMed. Has a "cited by" link to articles that have cited a given article (available
for citations published since 1995) as well as "related documents" that share references, authors
or keywords. Coverage: Variable from 1960.
Web of Knowledge
Search multiple databases at once - Web of Science, Biological Abstracts, CAB Abstracts,
FSTA, Medline, Zoological Record. Retrievals are de-duplicated, with the Web of Science record
being shown by default. Coverage dates vary by database, with some going back to 1864 (from
Zoological Record).
Web of Science (includes
Science Citation Index)
Is the online version of
Science Citation Index,
Social Sciences Citation Index, and
Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Provides the most current index to over 9000 of the
world's leading scholarly research journals in all disciplines; includes abstracts. Includes a
"citation tracker" link to articles that have cited a given article. New: Create auto-alerts on
topics of interest, receiving an email each week with new citations. Updated weekly. Coverage:
1970-present. [WOK]
Worldcat is not an index for journal literature. Rather, WorldCat is a one-stop source for the information about over 62 million books, journal titles, computer programs, etc. Very useful for completing book citations or for identifying and requesting books on a subject. Coverage: International; 1200 AD - present. [FirstSearch] A free public version can be found at: http://www.worldcat.org/.
ASABE Technical Library
The collection for American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineering publications
and standards. From the ASAE Technical Library, one can access the ASAE Standards, recent volumes
of ASAE Journals, ASAE Annual Meeting Papers, and ASAE Conference Proceedings.
Electronic Reference Books for the Life
Sciences
Includes free and subscription "reference" books for biologists, including Biographies,
Citation Guides, Dictionaries, Directories, Glossaries & Thesauri, Encyclopedias, Handbooks and
Manuals, Indexes, Methods & Protocols, Textbooks and more. Some titles of particular
note...
- a collection of online
over 500 computer manuals
Use RefWorks to collect citations for materials that you may later want to cite in your papers. Then, using the database that you've created, you can use RefWorks to help you automatically format your MS-Word documents in a proscribed style format. If you're familiar with EndNote, ProCite or Reference Manager, this is kind of like a web-based version, so you can access it from anywhere, as long as you can get to the internet. It is provided free to all U of Illinois students, faculty, and staff by the University Library and CITES.
To create an account, learn how to use RefWorks, or to find out how to export references from our various literature databases (Compendex, PubMed, CAB Abstracts, Web of Science, Google Scholar, etc.), please visit our RefWorks Support site. Note: RefWorks training sessions and tutorials are available. Check the Support Site for details.
Many researchers "grew up" using EndNote, and it's still a fine product. There are several differences between EndNote and RefWorks you will want to consider including:
The University of Illinois Library maintains a support site for local EndNote users. The site is primarily focused on helping users import citations into EndNote from our many bibliographic databases.
CITES Technology Training offers several EndNote classes for students and staff. Students should consult the Student Technology Training site for availability, and faculty and staff should consult the FAST3 site.
" Scholarly Communication" is a U of Illinois resource to help you learn how you can make your articles more accessible to researchers worldwide -- for if they're more accessible, they'll be read, used, and cited more readily. Additionally, this site will help you become more knowledgeable about scholarly communication issues such as copyright, author rights, the benefits of open access publishing, why journals cost so much, and more.
One way to make your articles more accessible is to put a copy of your article in
IDEALS
- Illinois
Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship - a digital archive for the research and
scholarship of faculty, staff, and students.
University LibraryFor comments on this page contact: Sarah Williams
Last modified by: Shu-wen Huang on 10/30/08