BIO500: Senior Seminar: The Research Process

A quick tutorial on reading and understanding a scientific paper, created and shared by Dr. Jennifer Raff, a research fellow in Anthropology at the University of Texas-Austin.  

As BIO500 Senior Seminar students, most of you already have experience using the library and its resources for researching project or paper topics. Whether you enjoy the research process or dread it, there are many tools at your disposal that can make the job more organized and researcher-friendly.

Many of the online databases and resources the library provides come with built-in features that can help you build your research. Here are some general tips for using these bells and whistles to help you keep track of your materials and stay informed about the latest research on your topic:

• Create an account. Information providers such as JSTOR, Ebsco (including Academic Search Premier, Medline with Full Text, and other databases), ScienceDirect, and others allow users to create free accounts for saving and sorting journal articles and other content for future use.
• Save your favorites. If you received good results from a particular search and find articles crucial to your research, many database platforms make it possible for you to save your searches and favorite articles to go back to at another time. You can re-run searches manually later or, in some cases, choose to have the search run automatically and send you the latest results via email.
• Set up alerts. Many of these providers also offer RSS feeds, email and social networking alerts when new research is published on your specified topic or within the parameters of a saved search you run on a regular basis.

Search Tips

• Check the "Full Text" and "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" boxes. This will filter your results to only those articles that are available in full text (not just as abstracts) and that have been peer-reviewed (that is, vetted by experts in a particular field).

Bells & Whistles

• "Narrow Results By..." feature: The left-hand column on the search results page allows you to limit your results by a variety of criteria, including subject heading and publication title.
• "Limit Your Results" feature: Allows you to further limit the results list to only those articles which list references, or by publication date using the date slider.
• "Visual Search" option: Allows you to see a cascading list of results by subject. Article titles specifically related to a subject will display at the bottom of the column.
• "Search History/Alerts" feature: See a list of searches from the current session; re-run, combine, or delete searches; save searches for subsequent sessions (permanant or temporary 24-hour save, or set up an email alert with customizable parameters); retrieve saved searches; edit alerts and alert settings. (Note: Saving and retrieving searches and setting up search alerts requires creating and logging into a free account.)

Search Tips

• Browse: Click the "Browse" tab in the green bar at the top of the page; browse titles alphabetically, by subject, or limit browsing to only those titles in your "Favorites" list (requires account creation and login). To see only those titles for which Centre College has full-text availability, be sure the "Full-text available" box is checked and the "Abstract only" box is unchecked.
• Search: Click the "Search" tab in the green bar at the top of the page. To limit results to full-text articles only, Use the "Source" dropdown box to select "Subscribed journals" (or, if you have an account, you can use the "My favorite journals" selection to limit results to titles from your "Favorites" list).
• Use the "Related Articles" box on the citation detail page to find similar articles.

Bells & Whistles

• Home screen (after logon): Displays up to 100 most recent searches, journals viewed, etc. (this feature can also be disabled); list of "Quick Links" to favorite journals and books as well as saved articles; news about latest ScienceDirect features and links to tutorials and help guides.
• Save articles to your "Quick Links" list. Simply copy the URL of the html article format, go back to the "Home + Recent Actions" page, click the "Add to My Quick Links" under the "Quick Links on the Web" heading. Give the link a name and paste the article link in the URL box.
• Alerts: Create your own search alert, or use one of the pre-set "Topic Alerts."
• Top 25 feature: View the top 25 most frequently-downloaded articles by subject, or sign up to have the "Top 25" for your chosen subjects emailed to you.

Search Tips

• Click the Search tab at the top of the page.
  • "Basic Search" allows results to be limited by discipline.
  • "Advanced Search" allows further limiting by material type, publication date range, language, and journal title.

Bells & Whistles

• Save your favorite articles. Requires account creation and login.
• Re-run recent searches. Use the "Select recent search" dropdown box to select a search from your current session.

Search Tips

• Search in the basic search box on the homepage.
• Use truncation marks to expand your search terms.  An * substitutes for zero or more character (e.g., *carbon* returns results for carbon, hydrocarbon, carbonate, polycarbonate, etc.).  A $ substitutes for zero or one character (e.g., favo$rite returns favorite and favourite).  A ? substitutes for exactly one character only (e.g., en?oblast returns endoblast and entoblast).
• Default search results are by order of publication.  However, you can quickly see the most influential articles on a topic with the "sort by" dropdown box.  Simply select "times cited -- highest to lowest" in the dropdown menu.

Bells & Whistles

• Follow the research trail. Once you select an article, you can find other articles which have cited it by clicking on the "Times Cited" link in the righthand column. 
• Save your favorite articles. Requires account creation and login.
• Re-run recent searches. Use the "Select recent search" dropdown box to select a search from your current session.