Scientific Scholarly Research (Daley & Scott)

Getting Started with Background Research

While not all content here will be peer-reviewed, the following resources can be a great place to brainstorm research questions, identify search terms, or explore a general field.

• • Science in Context (Gale)

  • Topics important in science today. Includes reference materials, magazines, journals, multimedia, websites, and more.

  • Science Online (Facts on File)

  • Covers all scientific disciplines, including biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, physics, and more. Definitions, biographies, news, and experiments.

• Wikipedia

  • Surprised to see a teacher recommend Wikipedia? While you shouldn't cite it as a final source for your project, and you'll need to verify any claims you see, Wikipedia can be very useful for getting familiar with a topic or finding additional resources.

Resources for Scholarly Articles

Once you have basic familiarity with your topic, you're ready to tackle these sources for scholarly articles.

• • 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.

  • PubMed Central (National Center for Biotechnology Information)

  • PubMed contains "more than 21 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books." PubMed Central will show you only articles that are available online, whereas the regular PubMed includes citations for many more, which can be requested through inter-library loan.

  • Google Scholar

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

Scholarly and Popular Sources

What's the difference? Why is it important? 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 full-text articles. Unless you have time for an inter-library loan request, don't waste your time on what we don't have. Filter for full-text results and free articles using advanced search options.

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 severe consequences of plagiarism and increasing our own credibility, we are participating in part of 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 (see Ms. Kitsis if you need to register) can help you format and track citations.

Other resources for help with citations:

• Arlington High School Guide to Student Research Projects

  • Created by Arlington High School teachers for Arlington High School 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. Database articles are NOT cited like 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.

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

Tip: Most of our databases provide a formatted citation at the bottom of the article, which you can copy and paste into your works cited page. Just be sure it's using the same format as required by your teacher.