MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011
HOW TO FIND A RESEARCH PAPER BY SEARCHING ONLINE DATABASES
PRESENTED BY JEN EIDELMANUCT LIBRARIES
2011E-mail: [email protected]
Telephone: 021 650 2773
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011
Guidelines on Writing Skills Prac Essay for 2019SHapgood 2011
The main objectives of the essay are
1) to practice your scientific writing skills
2) to learn some library and referencing skills and access papers in journals
3) to facilitate integration of the course material and see how a recent publication relates to some course material.
LIBRARY WEB PAGE: http://www.lib.uct.ac.za
This is where you will find a link to your Subject Guide:
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 – WHERE TO START? - Subject Guide
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 – LINK TO SUBJECT GUIDE
This is your library guide: http://libguides.lib.uct.ac.za/molecular_cell_biology
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 Subject Guide - Referencing and Writing
Use these links for referencing examples and referencing information.
To find journal articles you need to search in DATABASES that contain information relating to your subjects.Access this list of databases from the subject guide.
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 – Subject Guide
Find databases that relate to your subjects
This is an A-Z list of life sciences databases
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 List of Life Sciences Databases
http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/scitech/lifebases.htm
‘Web of Science, ‘PubMed’ and ‘ScienceDirect’ and are just some of the databases which you may wish to use to search for a journal article.
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 Life Sciences Databases
http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/scitech/lifebases.htm
We will search in these databases:
• Web of Science• ScienceDirect• PubMed
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011
Web of Science
Change the drop down menu to ‘Topic’
Limit your search by choosing the timespan from 2008 to present
Search tips:Combine keywords with ‘AND’. For example a search for “progesterone receptor*” AND Activator Protein I .This search will retrieve articles with all of those keywords.Using ‘AND’ will narrow your search results.
By using ‘OR’ the search engine will retrieve articles with either Activator Protein I OR Progesterone response element, not necessarily both together. Using OR will broaden your search results.
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical – 2011 WEB OF SCIENCE
MORE SEARCH TIPS:You will notice in this search we used quotation marks and an asterisk to
conduct the search.
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase “progesterone receptor*”
By using an asterisk * after a word, for example, receptor* the search engine will find both receptor and receptors
This asterisk is called a wildcard and can be used in front of a word as well. For example *oxide will find peroxide, iron oxide etc.
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical – 2011 WEB OF SCIENCE
This search returned 125 articles.
Results can be refined even further by using the ‘Refine results’ menu
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 WEB OF SCIENCE
Your search may be refined by choosing a specific journal title (Source Title). For example you may wish to see only articles in the journal called ‘Molecular Endocrinology’. Tick the box and choose ‘Refine’.
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 WEB OF SCIENCE
The search has been refined to 20 articles
Click SFX to check the availability of the article
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 WEB OF SCIENCE
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 WEB OF SCIENCE
In this instance the full text is available. Click on the GO button.
Click on Full Text (PDF) to read the article
Click on the Save icon to save the article
SCIENCEDIRECT
1. Click ‘Search’
2. Choose ‘Journals’ from the tab
3. Choose ‘Abstract, Title, Keyword’ from the drop down menu. Type your keywords in the search boxes.
5. Limit your search by date. Choose 2008 to present from the drop down menu.
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical - 2011 SCIENCEDIRECT
4. Limit the search to include journal articles
6. Click ‘Search’
58 articles found
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical – 2011 SCIENCEDIRECT
You may wish to refine your search even further by choosing a specific Journal title.
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical – 2011 SCIENCEDIRECT
Tick the box next to the journal name and then click ‘Limit to’
3 Articles found
Click PDF to see the full text of the article
The green box indicates that the full text is available
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical – 2011 SCIENCEDIRECT
PUBMED
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical – 2011 PUBMED
SEARCH:
“RNA polymerase II” AND “transcription initiation” AND
2008:2011[publication date]
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical – 2011 PUBMED
SEARCH TIP 1: Use quotation marks to search for terms as a phrase e.g.“RNA polymerase II” will find all those words together in that sequence .
SEARCH TIP 2: Use capital letters – AND - to combine different search terms. Using the word AND will narrow down your search. The search engine will return results that contain all of the words.
SEARCH TIP 3: To look for a range of dates, use the colon : e.g. 2008:2011 will find all publications from 2008 to 2011
SEARCH TIP 4: Use the command and square brackets to tell the search engine which field to look in. For example[publication date] - looks for articles using the dates specified[journal name] - looks for articles in the journal specified e.g.Nature[journal name] - looks for articles in the journal called nature.
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical – 2011 PUBMED
RESULTS OF SEARCH No 1.
MCB 2019S - Writing Skills Practical – 2011 PUBMED
RESULTS OF SEARCH No. 2
SEARCH:“leucine zippers” AND dimerization
AND journal of biological chemistry[journal name]
