Biology: Articles

• Academic journal articles are often authored by scholars and/or professionals active in a particular field
• Academic journal articles can be primary or secondary sources, depending on their purpose
• Scholarly articles provide a close look at a very specific topic, using data to support research findings
• Journal articles can lead you to other relevant sources through their bibliographies

Journals are the most widely used sources of primary literature in the sciences. However, not all of the content in a journal is primary literature.

Types of Scientific Literature

There are many types of scientific documents written for various purposes.  A few of the main ones are described below.

• Research article or report (found in journals)
  • gives a full report on new research or experiments conducted by the authors
  • intermediate length, typically 5-30 pages
  • usually divided into sections such as introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion
  • provides sufficient detail of the methods, procedures, and results, for others to evaluate the conclusions and/or repeat the experiment
  • cites relevant literature used by the authors in their research

• Communication (found in journals) - sometimes labeled as a letter or note
  • reports a significant research result that does not require an extensive study
  • brief article, typically 2-4 pages
  • usually not divided into sections
  • cites relevant literature used by the authors in their research
  • should not be confused with letters to the editor

• Review article (found in journals)
  • does not report original research
  • reviews previously published literature on a particular topic
  • frequently focuses on a specific time period
  • reports on work done by many researchers
  • long articles, typically 20 - 60 pages
  • usually contains extensive lists of literature references

Other common types of documents that may turn up in your searches, especially if using Google Scholar or webpages:

• Conference Proceedings

• reports of presentations made at professional meetings
• may be full articles or just abstracts of presentations

• Patent
  • describes a new invention
  • provides legal rights for the inventor
  • a government document

• Dissertation
  • describes new research conducted for a Ph.D. or other advanced degree
  • reviewed and accepted by a faculty committee

The following list of journals publish research conducted by undergraduate students. Some journals focus on topics in various fields of science, and some are interdisciplinary. These journals are available from their respective home pages. Search functionality will vary. 

Google Scholar is a free web-based search engine that locates scholarly materials such as books, articles, conference proceedings, patents, theses, preprints, abstracts, and technical reports. Google Scholar generally excludes non-academic websites, and its coverage tends to be stronger in the sciences, and weaker in the humanities. Use Google Scholar as an alternative starting point for your research, however, please note the full text version of an article listed in a set of results might not represent the final published version in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. These are known as preprints, and have not been peer-reviewed. 

Tip: You can configure your computer to map results from Google Scholar to available items from subscription databases at McKillop Library! .

Does Google Scholar index all of McKillop Library's subscription research databases and provide the full-text of articles from all of these databases?

No. While Google Scholar will allow you to find articles from some of McKillop Library's subscription article databases, it does not index all of our databases. You also want to search McKillop Library's databases directly to ensure comprehensive coverage of your topic. For access to all of the library's databases, see the Databases A-Z list or the Databases by Subject list. 

If you know a specific journal title, you can often search it in Google Scholar. Use the Advanced Search feature to filter by publication date, as well as Journal Titles, as illustrated in the image below. Most (but not all) of the undergraduate journals listed above can be searched using Google Scholar.

You can also try searching a broad topic from your BIO textbook using the advanced search function in Google Scholar. Notice a journal title is placed inside quotation marks to limit results to this specific journal title. For example:

What makes information "scholarly"

Instructors often ask students to find “scholarly”, “academic”, or “peer reviewed” sources of information for their research.  These terms all refer to the same type of information – sources based on in-depth research and are considered higher in quality and more reliable for your research.

These sources can range from chapters within books or entire books, or journal articles, but all have common characteristics that can help you recognize that type of information.

Peer Review

Peer review is a process where articles are submitted by the journal editor to be read and evaluated by experts in the field before being published. Reviewers recommend whether or not to publish and make comments and suggestions which authors must address before the article is accepted for publication. The goal is to maintain a high level of quality in articles that are published.

How can you tell if a journal is peer reviewed?

• Check the introductory and descriptive material on the journal publisher’s website:
  • Does it state that the journal is peer reviewed?
  • Does it refer to or describe the review procedure?
  • Does it give instructions for reviewers?

Some academic assignments call for scholarly peer reviewed sources. While Google Scholar does not provide limiters for peer review, many library databases do.

Please note: not all articles in a peer reviewed journal are peer reviewed. Editorials, letters to the editor, news, and opinion pieces, for example, are not peer reviewed.