MB 311: Molecular Microbiology Laboratory

What is this page? This page was created to support your work in MB 311.  It includes information on how to find articles within the library and resources for improving your writing.

Searching for Journal Articles on a Topic or Author

To search for a topic or author you will need to use an article database (not the ejournals list - more about using ejournals below).  

Find a good database.  Each database focuses on a particular subject. 

• If you know the name of a good database for your project already, use the alphabet key on the databases page to navigate to your database. 
  
• If you don't know the database name, use the subject pull down menu at the top of the databases page to choose your subject area.  I would suggest "biological sciences."  The right hand column lists a variety of biology-related databases.  Click on the red I to get more information about each database.  
• (Microbiology database suggestions below).
  

Break your topic down.  Article databases work best when you put a single idea in each search box.  For example, the research topic "finding Burkholderia cepacia complex in soil environments" could be broken down into three main ideas - Burkholderia cepacia, soil environments, and detection.  Each of these ideas would go in their own search box or be separated by "and."

Find the article.  Not all databases have full-text articles, and sometimes we have 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 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 title search) to see if we have it (either electronically or in print). 

Course Librarian

• Librarian: Hannah Rempel
• 
• Email: Click to reveal email

Three Suggested Microbiology Databases

MEDLINE - topics covered include clinical and experimental medicine; microbiology; pathology; pharmacology; physiology; reproductive biology; toxicology; and veterinary medicine (virtually identical to PubMed).

Biological Abstracts/BIOSIS - topics focus on biology, including biochemistry, endocrinology, genetics, microbiology, molecular and cellular biology, and physiology.

Web of Science - topics include all science disciplines, includes cited reference searching

Course Instructor

• Name: Dr. Walt Ream
• Email: Click to reveal this email
• Office Location: ALS 1081
• Office Hours: M&W 12-1, or by appointment

Finding Ejournals

Step 1: Identify specific articles of interest using the article database directions above.
Step 2:

• Click on the E-Journals list to see if the journal you need is available online (use the link above or go to ejournals in the center of the library's homepage under "quicklinks." 
• Enter the journal title (not the article title) in the search box at the top of the page. 
• If you get multiple results, choose the journal listing that has the date range that includes the time frame when your article was published. 
• Click on the blue publisher's link to get to the ejournal.
• Navigate to the correct volume, issue and page number for your article by using either the date links, the previous issues link, or the volume links (each ejournal interface looks a little different).
  

Step 3: If the journal is not online, find the call number for the journal(s) in which the article is found. (Use the library catalog for this step.) Find the article in the library and make a photocopy.

Examples of Journals with Editorials

Science magazine includes editorials in each issue.  Either click on the above link for Science or find it through the ejournals link on the library homepage.  Select either current issue or previous issue to see a journal issue.  Next click on "editorial" to see examples.

Nature also includes editorials. Either click on the above link for Nature or find it through the ejournals link on the library homepage.  Select an issue.  Next click on  "editorial" to see examples.

Gene Database Websites

NCBI - includes links to GenBank and BLAST

Nucleic Acids Research - Molecular Biology Database 

NIH Computational Molecular Biology - List of genomics, nucleic acids, protein, enzyme and plasmid databases

How to Read a Journal Article

The following websites give some tips on how to read scientific journal articles:

Reading a scientific article

How to Read a Journal Article 

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. 

 

How to Tell if a Journal is Peer-Reviewed

If you are not sure that an article you would like to use as a reference for your project is from a peer-reviewed journal, you can

• Ask an expert in the field (e.g. your instructor).
• Look inside an issue of the journal to see if it describes the kind of material published in the journal.
• Look at the journal's web site for the above information. Try a search in Google for the journal title and then look in their "about" section or their homepage for this information.
• Ask a librarian at the Reference Desk or email Hannah Rempel .

Citation Guides

Citation styles vary widely by journal.  Check the journal's website to see if they provide citation instructions under a section typically called "instructions for authors."  If you can't find this information on the website, use the references section of the journal article you want to model your references after as an example.   Pay particular attention to the order they place the information in, whether or not they use italics or bold, how they abbreviate journal titles, and how they use punctuation.

For some examples of some common citation styles preferred in the sciences see the CSE style guide or the APA style guide .