Ever dreamed of hanging out with Charles Darwin, letting him spill the secrets of his epic adventures described in his books, "The Voyage of the Beagle" (1845) and "On The Origins of Species" (1859)? How cool would that be? And what if you could peek into Gregor Mendel's mind as he noted the traits of his pea plants? Imagine understanding the eureka moment that led him to calculate those famous genetic ratios. His research paper is like a time machine, giving you a front-row seat to his groundbreaking discoveries. And then there's the dynamic duo - James Watson and Francis Crick. Don't you wish you could have been there, experiencing their excitement when they first introduced their B-form double helix DNA structure to the world? It's all there, preserved in their 1953 Nature paper, "Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid".

Sounds like an exciting journey through the minds of these brilliant scientists, right? Well, guess what? You can! Dive into their work, and let their words take you on a thrilling ride through their minds. Trust me, it's a trip worth taking. Unlike books, a research article is like a detective's formatted report on a super interesting mystery they've been working on. It's the result of a lot of snooping, experimenting, and head-scratching by people who are passionate about finding answers to questions we all wonder about.

To find research articles that cover a specific research area, you can use various scholarly databases and digital libraries. I will cover all these three databases and compare them with pros and cons. Remember that access to some of these resources might require a subscription (e.g., Web of Science®), but you can often access them through Penn library. You might also find free versions of articles using resources like "Open Access" Button, or by visiting the website of the researchers or their institutions. If you just could not find the full text for a research article, it is not a bad idea if you decide to directly contact the corresponding authors (usually listed as the last one with an email attached) for a copy of their publications or should you have any questions.

When searching, use specific keywords that match your research interest. This will help you find the most relevant articles. It's often helpful to start with a broad search and then narrow down your search based on the results you get. We will cover this briefly in our talks.

PubMed: I bet most of the researchers would choose PubMed as their first go-to place for reference search. The PubMed is operated by the US National Library of Medicine, which is part of the National Institute of Health (NIH), the primary agency of the U.S. government who is responsible for biomedical and public health research, the PubMed comprises more than 30 million curated citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. It's an excellent resource if you're looking for articles in the field of biomedicine. 

Web of Science®: It is a resourceful tool for scientific literature, offering comprehensive citation data for a multitude of academic disciplines. Web of Science is more than a simple database, as it offers It usually requires a subscription; however, I think you may be able to have access to it if using any campus computers.

Google Scholar: This is a free and simple-to-use tool for finding scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources. You can find articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other websites.