AP Biology Poster

Browsing & Background Sources

The following are NOT considered scholarly sources but may help you brainstorm research questions, identify search terms, or better understand your topic.

• • Advanced Science, Serving Society (AAAS)

• Boston Globe Health | Science

  • Boston Globe* (access archives through library database)

• National Geographic

• National Public Radio's Science Friday

  • New York Times Science News and Well Blog

    • New York Times* (access archives through library database)

  • Science in Context (science database)

• Science News for Students

• Science Online (science database)

  • Scientific American* (in school or home access)

  • Scientific American Mind* (in school or home access)

• Scitable by Nature Education

• YOUR TEXTBOOK!!

*Library resources. Password for home access is the same as all other database passwords.

Scholarly Sources

Once you have basic familiarity with your topic, you'll be ready to tackle these sources for scholarly, peer-reviewed articles. What's the difference and why do we care? This presentation should help.

Search Tips

Combine keywords to get articles that match each of your important concepts. For example, if you are researching alternative treatments for blood cancer:

alternative treatments AND blood cancer

Use quotation marks to find complete phrases, especially proper names and titles. For example:

"muscular dystrophy" or "genetic causes"

Filter for what you need. If you don't have time for an inter-library loan request, filter for full-text results with images. If you're beyond the stage of background research, filter for peer-reviewed content.

Experiment with advanced search strategies. What would happen if you added the phrase "literature review" to the document title field? Or maybe "systematic review" or "meta-analysis"?

Check your spelling. If you don't find anything on your topic, sloppy spelling may be to blame!

Citing Sources & Academic Integrity

Why cite sources? In addition to avoiding the consequences of plagiarism and increasing your credibility, you are participating an ongoing scholarly conversation. It is important for your readers to be able to find your sources, so they can enter into the dialogue as well.

Your school subscription to EasyBib can help you format and track citations, and now does APA and CSE as well as MLA (with your school account). Ask Ms. Kitsis if you need help upgrading!

• Nature

  • Our subscription covers Nature (scholarly) as well as Scientific American and Scientific American Mind (non-scholarly). If you find an article you need in one of the MANY other Nature.com journals, we can request them through interlibrary loan.

  • Note: Password is the same as all our other database passwords. You must use the link above. Let Ms. Kitsis know immediately if you have trouble accessing the site, as we pay good money to have it for you!!

  • PLOS ONE

  • A new kind of scientific publishing: open-access and online-only. Still peer-reviewed, but a little differently. Check out this short column from Nature explaining more.

• PubMed Central

• All free, full-text, scholarly, mostly biomedical research papers. Not to be confused with PubMed which includes citations for papers that are not free (but may be requested through interlibrary loan).

  • Academic OneFile (Gale)

  • Your source for peer-reviewed, full-text academic articles from leading journals in a wide variety of subjects, from science and technology to the arts and theology.

  • Google Scholar

  • You won't have immediate, free access to most of these articles, but if you find the perfect source, we can submit an interlibrary loan request on your behalf. Not for procrastinators!

Additional resources on citation:

• Arlington High School Research Handbook

  • Created by AHS teachers for AHS students, this guide explains the research process and what will be expected of you.

• Research and Documentation Online

  • Detailed explanation of in-text citations and works cited entries in perfect MLA format for a wide variety of sources.

Anatomy of a Database Citation

Most of your sources will come from article databases. Say it with me now: "Databases are not websites!" Here is a sample database article citation in MLA format:

Sanders, Rogier W. "HIV Takes Double Hit Before Entry." BMC Biology 10 (2013): 99. Academic OneFile. Web. 13 Feb. 2013.

And these are the parts:

Author last name, first name. "Title of article." Journal title volume and issue (date of publication): page numbers. Database name. Medium. Date of access.

This research site from Bedford/St. Martin's has other examples.

Tip: Most of our library databases provide MLA formatted citations at the bottom of each article. You will use the citation style assigned by your teacher.