How to search for references for formal biology lab report?

[athalia]

How would i go about searching for a biological review references for a formal biology lab report? I need to site four references in my introduction and I cant find any reputable sources.

[Louise]

How would i go about searching for a biological review references for a formal biology lab report? I need to site four references in my introduction and I cant find any reputable sources.

Why don't you ask your local librarian for help? Either at school or at the local library...

For references, either peer reviewed journal articles (which you may not be able to access) or textbooks are considered good sources. You will need to actually look at the references and read them, so you will probably have to go to the library to view these items, unless you have acess to a bunch of biology texts some other way. You can try using google scholar, but I've noticed that they only show the first page for a lot of articles now- you should only cite papers you can read the whole thing- you never know what the conclusions might say.

[This is what I'm doing right now for my job- finding references for a paper. While the internet is very useful, sometimes you just have to go to the library!]

Louise

[deleted-71447]

What is the subject of your laboratory report? If it deals with experiments or topics that are fairly well established, you will probably be able to use text books for citations. If you are dealing with a very specific topic, something like Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/) can be useful. And if you can give some clear information about what you need, researchers here might be able to provide relevant references or even electronic copies of peer reviewed papers.

[hhemken]

athalia,

Try googling something like this:

"scientific journals" plant botany

You will find a lot of good leads. Also try these:

http://www.e-journals.org/botany/
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
http://elsevier.com/wps/find/homepage.cws_home
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/

Many of these provide full-text online, others charge money. You can locate articles online, then go to your local university and get photocopies of the articles.

Let us know if you need more detailed help.

[carolinethorn]

Hi Athalia,

Some of what you would do is a little dependent on what grade you are in and how much experience you have and what kind of a library you have access to - a school library, local public library or college library.

Generally the first thing I do is find a very general reference. This should tell you some of the basic facts about your topic in general. For a school science project, depending a little bit on your topic, this could be something from an encyclopedia, like Britannica or World Book, it could be a reference book from the library or an online encyclopedia like wikipedia or Encarta. So lets say i was doing a project on how iron effects plant growth. I might look up plant nutrition in the encyclopedia and find out what nutrients plants need.

Then I would start to find more detailed references - sometimes these can be found in the citation or reference list from the general reference you found first. I might search for articles that mention the specific materials i used. For biology projects, the journals Scientific American and New Scientist often have good papers that are written for the general public to read and that are "review" articles, they talk about many aspects of the subject not a specific experiment. Websites from government departments can also be reputable sources - they often have descriptions about research in medicine or agriculture.
For my example project I might find a book about gardening with a chapter on iron rich soil and i might find a website from an enivronmental group that talks about pollution from iron works and its effects on the local environment. Then i might find a website that describes an experiment where someone tested the phosphorus content of soil and plant growth that described how to do the experiment - and this might have the method i would adapt to use for my project. try and find a citation for each different aspect of the project you talk about in your introduction.

Then depending on how advanced your project is and what kind of library you have access to you can find articles from scientific journals.
In general though i would stick to citations where you can understand almost everything that the paper talks about. Check with your teacher what they consider to be "reputable" resources, some teachers may prefer that you use library books rather than websites.

Post back with more about your topic and what you have found so far and we can help out.

Best of luck,
Caroline