Helpful Websites
These government-sponsored websites will have helpful information on emerging diseases and are appropriate for this class because of the reliable information they provide.
Centers for Disease Control - use the search box or check out the Emerging Infectious Diseases publication
National Institutes of Health - use the search box to find information on your disease
World Health Organization - use the search box to find information on your disease
Evaluate Your Sources
- Does the source have a bibliography? This can lead you to other sources.
- Is there an author listed as part of the citation? Judging authority can be difficult without an author.
- Is the journal refereed (peer reviewed)?
- How old is the source? Will this matter for your topic? Currency of information can be important. Some aspects of a topic may need currency more than others.
- What other terminology is being used either by the author or by the database? Keep an eye out for other words you can use in your search statements.
- Does the OSU Libraries own the journal (either in print or electronically)? If we don't own it, it will take more time to get your hands on the source.
How to Read a Journal Article
The following websites give some tips on how to read scientific journal articles:
My brief advice for reading journal articles is to keep a pen handy to write notes to yourself in the margins, and always write a summary of what you learned from the paper at the top of the paper or on a post-it note immediately after you finish reading the paper.
Three Suggested Databases for MB 435
Databases help you find primary literature. You can search databases for topics, for example - dengue fever - and you can limit your search to journal articles published within the past 5 years.
MEDLINE - topics covered include clinical and experimental medicine; microbiology; pathology; pharmacology; physiology; reproductive biology; toxicology; and veterinary medicine (virtually identical to PubMed).
Agricola - topics covered include agricultural research
Biological Abstracts/BIOSIS - topics focus on biology, including biochemistry, endocrinology, genetics, microbiology, molecular and cellular biology, and physiology.
Finding a Copy of Your Articles
Not all databases have full-text articles, and sometimes the library has the article available electronically, but it is not immediately available from the database with one click. If you do not see a PDF icon for the article within the database, you have 3 options -
- you can click on the "get this item" button underneath the article description in the database, which will help you discover whether or not our library has the article,
- copy the name of the journal title, open another tab or window to the library's homepage, click on the ejournals link and paste the name of the journal in the search box, once you have opened the journal, find the right volume, issue and page number for your article,
- if the journal title is not in the ejournals list, paste the title into the library's catalog (use the journal title search) to see if we have it (either electronically or in print).
Successful Citations
There are two parts to creating successful citations - 1) deciding what information to reference, and 2) recording the citation in an acceptable format.
1)To avoid plagiarizing and successfully include the best information from what you read, check out these tips:
2)To successfully cite the articles, books or lectures that you refer to in your lab report in the correct format, use the following resources:
Microbiology Writing Manual the official WIC manual for OSU Microbiology students
CBE Citations in the References section
Last Update: September 25, 2009 13:03
