PHL 195 Bailey CBL Project: Finding Science Articles
Finding scientific articles
Library databases provide access to thousands of peer reviewed scientific journals, as well as news and popular magazine articles. If you are new to database searching, be sure to watch both of the videos on this page to get started.
Library databases are NOT intuitive to use, and there are scores of different databases, each with unique content. Consulting a librarian to get some tips about which database is best for a particular topic, and what strategies work best with that database, can save you time.
This page also includes information on Google Scholar, a source for finding scientific articles online.
Finding articles through the PCC Library (4 minutes)
PCC library provides access to over 100 subscription databases. This video shows the fastest way to start searching the largest databases, EBSCOHost.
Brainstorming Keywords (3 minutes)
Search Strategy Overview
1. Use quotation marks around two or more words in a search term to locate them as an exact phrase.
2. Break up your question into separate keywords and use different boxes for each idea.
3. Brainstorm synonyms and related concepts and include them in your search using OR.
4. Use an asterisk (*) to locate root words that have different endings.
- will bring back child, childs, children, childrens, childhood
- will bring back meditate, meditation, meditators, meditative
Recommended science databases available at the PCC Library
Find these and other library databases from the link for Databases on the PCC Library website, or directly from the Articles and Databases page.
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new windowFull text for more than 4,500 scholarly social sciences, humanities, general science, education and multi-cultural journals. 3,700 are peer-reviewed.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowFull text for more than 1,000 peer-reviewed life sciences, Health Science, physical sciences, and engineering journals with citation information for thousands more. Look for the "Full-text available" indicators to view articles online. View the Science Direct handout.
- GreenFILE This link opens in a new windowScholarly, government and general-interest content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
- Academic OneFile (Gale) This link opens in a new windowAcademic OneFile is a starting point for peer-reviewed, full-text articles from the world's leading journals and reference sources. Covering the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects, it contains millions of articles available in full-text. Includes full-text New York Times content from 1995 to present.
Find peer reviewed research on the web
Find research articles on the web at scholar.google.com. Not all of the articles will be peer reviewed, but the quality will be much higher than from an ordinary Google search.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new windowGoogle Scholar searches the web for scholarly articles, reports, books, and other materials. If using Google Scholar from a PCC campus, you can access full text articles. If PCC has access to an article, a "Find it @ PCC" link will appear to the right of the search result. Click “Find it @ PCC” to go to the library catalog where you will be offered a choice to view the article. From home, you will need to set your Google Scholar preferences to access PCC Library resources. See How to Search PCC Library on Google Scholar for directions on how to set your Google Scholar preferences at home.