Biology Symposium

Day One: Debriefed!

The collective wisdom of FIVE biology classes combined came up with the following characteristics of a good research question for bio symposium:

• Has more than one possible answer

• Focused, specific, concrete

• Can be answered through evidence and data

• Interesting to you (you'll spend a long time with it!)

• Interesting and/or important to others

• Challenging, but not so hard that you can't succeed/understand

• Related to biology (but your teachers are great at showing how EVERYTHING comes back to biology!)

• Takes form of a question (not just a topic area)

• Makes you think!

Group brainstorms are linked below for anyone still shopping for a topic:

• Ms. Daley - A Block

• Mr. Vautour - B Block

• Mr. Vautour - D Block

• Mr. Vautour - F Block

• Mr. Vautour - G Block

Thanks, everyone!

Day One: The Big Biology Browse

Your task today is to browse a variety of popular and academic sources to locate biology-related studies that are of interest to you.

Thinking About Browsing

What are we doing? Browsing popular coverage of science research can make the original academic studies much more accessible.

As you browse, consider these strategies:

• • Skimming chronologically or by topic center

  • Keyword search

  • Chaining

Tip: Try filtering for science or health results and adding keywords like "study" or "researchers" to make your search results more relevant.

Sources for Browsing

Popular and Trade Periodicals

These resources can be a great place to brainstorm research questions, identify search terms, or explore a general field.

• • Advanced Science, Serving Society (AAAS)

• Boston Globe Health | Science

  • Boston Globe (access through library database)

• National Geographic

• National Public Radio's Science Friday

  • New York Times Science News and Well Blog

    • New York Times (access through library database)

• Science News for Students (Society for Science & the Public)

  • Scientific American* (in school or home access) [complete access!]

  • Scientific American Mind* (in school or home access) [complete access!]

• Scitable by Nature Education

*Thanks to your input, we have upgraded our trial to a subscription! You now have complete access to the archives. The magic word (i.e., password) for home access is the same as the other database passwords.

Research Databases

Science databases can be browsed by topic as well as searched. Periodical databases offer back issues of magazines and newspapers that are not available on the open web.

• Science in Context

• Science Online

• General OneFile

• Opposing Viewpoints in Context

  • Gale Power Search (search across all Gale databases at once)

Printed Sources

Books, magazines, and even your textbooks are great browsing sources.

• • Back issues of magazines in the Media Center or provided by your teacher

  • Library books in nonfiction and reference (check the catalog or browse the shelves)

  • Your textbook is a great source to browse for topics!

Day Two: Searching Scholarly Sources

Your task today is to practice searching peer-reviewed literature for articles related to your topics of interest.

Scholarly and Popular Sources

What's the difference and why do we care? This presentation should help.

Sources for Scholarly Articles

Once you have basic familiarity with your topic, you'll be ready to tackle these sources for scholarly, peer-reviewed 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 submit an interlibrary loan request on your behalf. Not for procrastinators!

• Nature* (in school or home access) [complete access!]

*Thanks to your input, we have upgraded our trial to a subscription! You now have complete access to the archives. The magic word (i.e., password) for home access is the same as the other database passwords.

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.

Exit Ticket

Before you leave today, your teacher will ask you to complete an exit ticket on your preliminary interests.

Additional resources on citation:

• 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. 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 databases provide MLA formatted citations at the bottom of each article. They contain all the necessary information, though you may need to edit them for the citation style your teacher requires.