LibGuides: Library Research Step-By-Step Guide: CHEM 270: Overview

The Research Cycle for Literature Discovery

This guide is structured to take you through the stages of a typical research cycle:

Prepare. Establish a question and requirements of your assignment. Conduct background research on the themes of your question to establish baseline knowledge and context.
Search. Guided by your question and using the key concepts and terms you learned during background research, employ a range of advanced searching techniques to identify relevant scholarly resources that can help you answer your question.
Evaluate. Thoroughly assess the sources you found during your literature search for quality, accuracy, and relevance to your own work.
Cite. Participate in the conventions of scholarship by accurately citing all of the sources you decide to use in your final paper in an appropriate style for your field. By citing your sources, you help the cycle of research continue.

Need Any Help?

If you're struggling with anything related to this tutorial, please don't hesitate to contact me at gustavsen@gonzaga.edu. I want to help you out in any way that I can. You can also book a Zoom or phone appointment with me here. If you need help immediately and I'm not available, you can always use the library's 24/7 chat service to get help from a librarian.

Copyright Notice

Library Research Activity Outline and Expectations

This guide was created to help guide you through your research process for the "Scientific Writing for a Nontechnical Audience" paper in Chemistry 270 with Professor Matsumoto. By following the steps, you will build a foundation of knowledge on your topic that you can use to find and evaluate resources for your paper.

There are 3 tasks associated with this guide:

Complete an interactive database searching activity to learn how to make the most of advanced search skills and tools to find appropriate sources for your paper.
Complete a guided worksheet to evaluate a source you're considering for your paper.
Set up your RefWorks account.

If you have questions or concerns about anything in this guide, please don't hesitate to contact your librarian (me! down there!).

Chemistry Research Guide
Visit the main Chemistry research guide for all the best chemistry research databases, chemical information sources, and other online chemistry tools.

STEM Specialist Librarian

Nicole Gustavsen

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509-313-3861

Subjects: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Interdisciplinary Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, Technology

Top Resources in Related Science & Technology Fields

Please refer to the full Biology Research Guide for resources, tools, and services in biology, biochemistry, and biomedicine.

Agricola (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
A database of the US Department of Agriculture’s National Agriculture Library, comprised of journal articles, monographs, theses, technical reports, patents, software, and audiovisual material on the topic of agriculture dating back to 1970.

On Campus Guest Access
Environment Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Environment Complete is a multidisciplinary database providing indexing and full-text access to a wide variety of journals and other publications in the fields of agriculture, ecology, biology, environmental law, public policy, and related fields.
On Campus Guest Access
BioMed Central This link opens in a new window
BioMed Central (BMC), a subset of Springer Nature and one of the first and largest open access STEM publishers, provides access to over 300 peer-reviewed journals in a wide variety of fields, including but not limited to biology, medicine, chemistry, and environmental studies.
Biomedical Reference Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
This collection provides access to full-text, indexed and abstracted biomedical research journals covering a broad range of disciplines, including medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and pre-clinical sciences. Coverage also extends to include structured research evaluating current and past health care systems.
On Campus Guest Access
PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed is an openly searchable and highly comprehensive database of biomedical literature, providing citations from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text open access content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

Please refer to the full Engineering Research Guide for more resources, tools, and services for civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering, computer science and engineering, materials science, and engineering management.

IEEE Xplore Digital Library This link opens in a new window
The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Xplore Digital Library provides full-text access to journals, transactions, and magazines and conference proceedings published since 1998 and IEEE standards from 1948 to the present.
Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library This link opens in a new window
The ACM Digital Library is a comprehensive database covering computing and information technology. The repository includes the complete collection of ACM publications plus an extended bibliographic database of core works in computing from scholarly publishers.
ASTM Compass: Standards and Engineering Digital Library This link opens in a new window
ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) Compass provides access to voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services, as well as access to a number of engineering journals, manuals and monographs, selected technical papers and reports, and data series.
Ei Engineering Village: Compendex This link opens in a new window
Ei Engineering Village: Compendex is a comprehensive engineering literature database of peer reviewed and indexed publications with over 20 million records from 77 countries across 190 engineering disciplines. Every record is indexed using the Engineering Index Thesaurus to ensure discovery and retrieval of engineering-specific literature.
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Library This link opens in a new window
ASCE Library is a full-text civil engineering database providing the contents of peer-reviewed journals published by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Online access for core ASCE journals begins in 1983.

Please refer to the full Environmental Studies Research Guide for resources, tools, and services related to environmental science and environmental and sustainability policy.

Environment Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Environment Complete is a multidisciplinary database providing indexing and full-text access to a wide variety of journals and other publications in the fields of agriculture, ecology, biology, environmental law, public policy, and related fields.
On Campus Guest Access
GreenFILE (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
GreenFILE is a large collection of indexing and abstracts for scholarly, government, and general-interest publications covering all aspects of human impact on the environment, including climate change, sustainable agriculture, green building, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
On Campus Guest Access
Agricola (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
A database of the US Department of Agriculture’s National Agriculture Library, comprised of journal articles, monographs, theses, technical reports, patents, software, and audiovisual material on the topic of agriculture dating back to 1970.

On Campus Guest Access
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Interdisciplinary database for core journals in the fields of the arts & humanities, social sciences, and life sciences, providing archival access to each journal beginning with volume 1.
Hathi Trust This link opens in a new window
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, providing access to online collections which include digitized books, music, college/university publications and manuscripts from libraries around the world.

Please refer to the full Mathematics Research Guide for more resources, tools, and services for mathematics research.

MathSciNet This link opens in a new window
MathSciNet is a database from the American Mathematical Society (AMS) which provides indexing, abstracts, and reviews for much of the mathematical sciences literature, and includes Mathematical Reviews, which publishes over 40,000 expert reviews of currently published literature per year.
arXiv This link opens in a new window
arXiv is an open-access repository of electronic preprint papers that are approved for posting after moderation (but not peer review). arXiv provides access to scientific papers in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics.

Please refer to the full Physics Research Guide for resources, tools, and services for research in physics.

American Physical Society (APS) Journals This link opens in a new window
APS Journals is a full-text database of all scholarly journals and publications from the American Physical Society, a leading publisher in the field of physics. Includes complete coverage for Physical Review Series I-II (1893-1960) and Series III (1960-present) Phys. Rev. sub-journals; Physical Review Letters; Reviews of Modern Physics; and the open-access magazine Physics. Physical Review Series I-II are available in the Physical Review Online Archive (PROLA), which is included in the APS Journals database.
IOPscience (Institute of Physics Publishing) This link opens in a new window
IOPscience is a full-text repository of Institute of Physics (IOP) publications, including scholarly journals, eBooks, and open access conference proceedings.