Research Guides: BSCI 361: Principles of Ecology: Article Databases

Accessing Articles at UMD

UMD Discover
Article Databases

UMD Discover is the catalog for the Libraries. The catalog is a great place to begin your search for academic articles. You can search by subject, topic, title, author, and much more. To find and access articles through the catalog, follow these steps:

Go to the library's catalog.
In the search box, type what you want to search for and press the red SEARCH button.
On the left hand side, click the Article filter under "Resource Type", and then press APPLY FILTERS at the bottom of the page on the left hand side.
Once you find an article in the results that meets your needs, look for the green Available Online link. This let's you know that we have access to the article. If you see a grey or blue "See Request Options", we do not have direct access to the article, but can get it for you. Contact me if you need help with these types of articles.
Click the article's title, and you will enter the record. Scroll down about halfway until you see the View Online section. Below "Full text availability", you will see one or more databases to click on that will take you to the article.

Tip: Look closely at the databases listed under "Full text availability." Check that the database covers the year or volume/issue for your article. You may think that each will lead to the article, but sometimes that is deceiving as a database may cover the journal the article was published in, but not the year or volume/issue for your needed article. If you are ever in doubt, contact me!

Please note that some of these resources only index journal articles, meaning that they don't actually include the full text. To access an article from this type of database, use the red Find@UMD button or the Full Text at Publisher link to help you locate the full article or search for the full journal or article title in the UMD library catalog.

Best Bets:

BIOSIS Previews
Provides access to the life sciences literature from more than 5,500 journals, books, conference proceedings, US patents, papers and posters, nomenclature rules, and taxonomic keys. Provides access to the traditional areas of biology, such as botany, zoology and microbiology, as well as related fields such as biomedical, agriculture, pharmacology and ecology. Interdisciplinary fields such as medicine, biochemistry, biophysics, bio-engineering and biotechnology are also included. Time span 1970-present.
Scopus
Scopus is an abstract and citation database with over 80 million records and 1.8 billion cited references that date back to 1970. Includes over 27 thousand serial titles and 249 thousand monographs in the social, physical, life and health sciences, as well as over 44 million patent records. More information on using Scopus is available at: https://elsevier.libguides.com/Scopus.
Web of Science Core Collection
The Web of Science Core Collection provides comprehensive coverage of the sciences, social sciences, and arts, and humanities across journals, books and conference proceedings. It indexes more than 5,700 major journals across 164 scientific disciplines. The best database for finding what papers have cited other papers. Cited references can be traced forward in time. Web of Science Training Materials available here: http://wokinfo.com/training_support/training/web-of-science

Other Databases:

AGRICOLA
Citations to journal articles, book chapters, monographs, conference proceedings, serials, technical reports, and other materials on a range of agricultural topics.
BioOne
BioOne offers full text of high-impact research journals, focused in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences and published mostly by small societies and non-commercial publishers.

bioRxiv
bioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive") is a free online archive for unpublished preprints in the life sciences. It is operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a not-for-profit research and educational institution. Articles are not peer-reviewed before being posted online; however, posting preprints makes preliminary findings immediately available to the scientific community.

Dissertations & Theses Global
This database is the an authoritative source for information about doctoral dissertations and master's theses. The database represents the work of authors from over 1,000 graduate schools and universities. Full text is available from 1997 to the present. It also contains a significant amount of new international dissertations and theses both in citations and in full text. It offers access to more than 90 percent of the doctoral dissertations accepted each year in North America. The database also covers thousands of dissertations and theses from around the globe. Time Span: 1861 to present.

Global Plants
JSTOR Global Plants offers access to botanical resources from dozens of herbaria, libraries, museums and other research institutions. The database includes plant type specimens from herbaria around the world, scientific research articles and correspondence dating back hundreds of years, and full-text books and reference works on botany.

GreenFile
Collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and local/national governments, and what can be done at each level to minimize these effects. Topics covered include global climate change, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
PubMed
The National Library of Medicine's Medline database that provides abstracts and indexing for about 4,600 biomedical journals published in the U.S. and 70 foreign countries, and includes additional older citations and out of scope citations from Medline journals. Medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, psychiatry, pre-clinical sciences, medical education, public health, health care planning and administration of services. Also includes additional life science journals. mid-1960s - present
Zoological Record, 1864-present
The world's oldest continuing database of animal biology. It is considered the world's leading taxonomic reference, and with coverage back to 1864, has long acted as the world's unofficial register of animal names.