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BIOL 212 - Introduction to Organismal and Population Biology

In this guide, you will learn how to find primary research articles for your BIOL 212 assignment.

Peer-Reviewed Sources

How can you tell if an article is "peer-reviewed", or "scholarly"?

Watch the video below to learn how to figure out whether the source you found is a "peer-reviewed" article.

Identify a Peer-Reviewed Article by USC Libraries

The databases below will have the best information for your topic:

Database Disciplinary Coverage
Biological Abstracts Life sciences, ranging from botany to microbio to pharmacology
BioOne Biological, ecological, and environmental sciences
JSTOR Multi-disciplinary literature
Google Scholar @ CSUSM Multi-disciplinary literature
ScienceDirect Multi-disciplinary literature, mainly in the sciences and medical fields, limited to Elsevier published research (Note: make sure you don't *only* search ScienceDirect, since you will only find research published by a single publishing company)

 

Tips Examples
Use keywords, not long search phrases

Instead of searching for "How does temperature affect the heart rate of ectotherms?" break down your search into the main keywords:

ectotherm, heart rate, temperature

To get more focused results:

Use quotation marks (" ") to keep phrases together

Use AND to combine different keywords

Try adding species names to find species-specific information

 "heart rate" AND temperature AND ectotherm AND Daphnia

To get broader results:

Use OR to combine similar/associated keywords

("heart rate" OR "cardiac stress") AND temperature AND Daphnia

 

 
Look for ways to limit your search in the database

You can often limit by type of article (scholarly and peer-reviewed) & year of publication
Subjects: Biology