BIO 142: Article Databases

Another option is to check and see if the journal is available at the University of Illinois. Ask a librarian to help you with this. You can visit the University of Illinois in-person, and copy or scan the article to your USB Flash Drive.

Use databases to find peer-reviewed articles

• Databases index journal articles and are NOT considered websites
• No database covers every journal in a field. Search several for comprehensive coverage
• Off campus? Use your Parkland username and password 

• Parkland's best database for science
• Articles from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals in natural and social sciences
• Full text not available?  You can request that we purchase the article; typically 24 hour turnaround (excluding weekends)

• Multidisciplinary, so covers history, psychology, etc. as well as some science
• A decent starting point, but you will probably need to use other databases as well
• Limit to peer reviewed articles, so you don't get things from popular magazines
• For a more comprehensive search, don't limit to full text

• Produced by the National Library of Medicine; over 23 million citations to biomedical literature (articles and book chapters)
• Limited full text available
• DON'T use quotation marks. PubMed uses "Automatic Term Mapping" to "map" your search terms into relevant subject headings.

• Best database for biology
• Parkland does not subscribe to this database
• Covers over 4,000 journals from over 100 countries

• Includes citations to some peer reviewed articles, as well as patents, books, and some PowerPoint presentations
• Good for "I need a few citations/articles quickly"
• Google doesn't tell us specifically what journals it covers
• NOT comprehensive -- if you've only used Google Scholar, you have not done a complete search
• Often takes you to "for pay" sites for full text
• Full text access depends on where you use it (Libraries can provide full text of articles for on-campus use)
• Can't limit to a specific discipline
• OK, this one really is a website, but it acts like a database, leading you to some scholarly material

Journal Search can be used to find if the Library has access to the full-text articles published in a specific magazine or journal. Search by subject, title, or keywords. Use the "Search Inside" feature to keyword search within that magazine or journal for articles relating to a subject.

If the book or article you need is not available here, we can often borrow materials from other libraries. Articles may arrive via email OR need to be picked up in person. It generally takes 2 weeks for an item to be sent.