LibGuides: Natural Sciences: Articles on Your Topic

Recommended Databases: Start Here

Medline
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- Why search here?
  Created by the National Library of Medicine, Medline provides access to articles about biomedical, health, and biological topics. Medline includes "authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more."
- What's included?
  Approximately 5,000 of the world's leading biomedical journals are indexed in Medline.
Environment Complete
- Why search here?
  This resource provides deep subject coverage in applicable areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning and more.
- What's included?
  Contains full text for many of the most used journals in the discipline, along with full text for such relevant monographs as Encyclopedia of World Environmental History and Advances in Water Treatment & Environmental Management.
CINAHL Complete
- Why search here?
  CINAHL Complete is the world's most comprehensive nursing & allied health research database, offering complete coverage of English-language nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses' Association.
- What's included?
  This resource includes full text for hundreds of journals and books/monographs as well as indexing for more than 5,000 journals and the full text of more than 130 Evidence-Based Care Sheets.
Agricola
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- Why search here?
  Agricola is a database of materials acquired by the National Agriculture Library and other institutions. These are bibliographic records for books, journals, and audiovisual materials in the areas of agriculture, forestry, and animal science.
- What's included?
  Citations and some full text. If full text is not directly available, search the journals or publication by name in the Simmons Library catalog.
PubMed
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- Why search here?
  PubMed comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals and online books.
- What's included?
  Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher websites. Also included are links to full-text articles available through the Simmons Library. Look for the Find Full-Text button on the upper right side of the screen to see if Simmons has it.
Scopus Index
- Why search here?
  Keep track of what's happening in the research world. Across all research fields—science, mathematics, engineering, technology, health and medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities—Scopus is an index that delivers a broad overview of global, interdisciplinary scientific information that researchers like you need.
- What's included?
  Scopus has twice as many titles and over 30% more publishers listed than any other A&I database, with interdisciplinary content that covers the research spectrum: timely updates from thousands of peer-reviewed journals; preliminary findings from millions of conference papers; and the thorough analysis in thousands of books.
SciFinder Scholar
- Why search here?
  SciFinder Scholar searches the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) databases, which cover research from many scientific disciplines, including biomedical sciences, chemistry, engineering, material science and agricultural science. You must create an account to use this service.
- What's included?
  References from nearly 9,500 currently published journals and patents from more than 50 active patent issuing authorities.
- Create account
  Creating an account is required. Create an account with your Simmons email address.
Note: In order to use SciFinder Scholar you need to first setup a personal login
Step 1: Create Your SciFinder Scholar Account: Click Here. You must use your Simmons University email address when setting up your new account.
Step 2: Login To SciFinder Scholar: Here

Open Access Journals - Biology

PLOS Journals: Animal Behavior Articles
PLOS ONE is an inclusive journal community working together to advance science for the benefit of society, now and in the future. Founded with the aim of accelerating the pace of scientific advancement and demonstrating its value, we believe all rigorous science deserves to be published and should be discoverable, widely disseminated and freely accessible to all.
PLOS Biology
PLOS Biology publishes significant advances across the biological sciences. And we push boundaries.
Designed to advance science and the communities who depend upon it, we’re transforming research communication to fit the research process. Evolving article types and policies empower authors to share the full story behind their science with a global audience of researchers, educators, policy makers, patient advocacy groups, and the public.
PLOS Climate
PLOS Climate publishes work that is methodologically rigorous and adheres to the principles of transparency and ethics that are the bedrock of trust and progress. Research from every angle and every region of the world is considered, including but not limited to earth, ocean and atmospheric science, palaeoclimatology, climate-smart energy and engineering, adaptation, mitigation, climate economics, social and health impacts of climate change, policy and governance, ethics and philosophy, and climate-related behavior and psychology.
BioRxiv
bioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive") is a free online archive and distribution service for unpublished preprints in the life sciences. It is operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a not-for-profit research and educational institution. By posting preprints on bioRxiv, authors are able to make their findings immediately available to the scientific community and receive feedback on draft manuscripts before they are submitted to journals.

Searching Tips

Keywords are:

A good place to start research
The important concepts in your own words
Found anywhere in the article (title, author, subject terms, etc.)
Very flexible

Connecting Concepts:

Join similar ideas or alternate terms with "OR" to broaden search.
Link different parts of your topic with "AND" to narrow down search
Exclude concepts with "NOT"

Limit to Peer-Reviewed, Refereed or Scholarly articles:

This is the part of the publication and editorial process for academic and research articles. Being peer-reviewed is a sign that a paper's author(s) have done a certain level of due diligence in their work and their research is complete, manages conflicts of interest, and is fair and objective.

Narrow the Date Range:

When looking for Current Research or Evidence-Based Practices limit your date range to the last 3-5 years.

Still not finding anything? Ask a Librarian!

PDF vs. Find Full-Text

When you're looking at search results in a database you're going to see a few different ways to get to the full article, usually either:

Both of these will take you to the article (if we have access).

If you see the Access Options screen below, it means we don't have full-text access to the article. Try Google Scholar first to see if it's available for free. If not, click Request via Interlibrary Loan. We'll get the article for you from another library, usually within a few days.

Open Access Journals - Chemistry

ChemRxiv
ChemRxiv (pronounced 'chem-archive') is a free submission, distribution, and archive service for unpublished preprints in chemistry and related areas. ChemRxiv gives researchers across a broad range of fields related to the chemical sciences the opportunity to share early results with colleagues and receive recommendations for improvement, ahead of formal peer review and publication.
American Chemical Society (ACS) Open Access Chemistry Journals
ACS publishes a range of fully open access journals, covering all aspects of the chemical sciences and related fields.
MDPI Chemistry
Chemistry is a peer-reviewed, open access journal of chemistry, published quarterly online by MDPI.
PLOS Chemistry
PLOS ONE is an inclusive journal community working together to advance science for the benefit of society, now and in the future. Founded with the aim of accelerating the pace of scientific advancement and demonstrating its value, we believe all rigorous science deserves to be published and should be discoverable, widely disseminated and freely accessible to all.
Royal Society of Chemistry
It’s our mission to help you make the world a better place. Open access is crucial to achieving this. We believe that it is the key to building a fairer, more equitable society. One where everyone can access and benefit from discoveries – including researchers, funders, policymakers and the general public.

Open Access Journals - Physics

Institute of Physics
"IOP Publishing provides publications through which leading-edge scientific research is distributed worldwide. IOP Publishing is central to the Institute of Physics (IOP), a not-for-profit society. Any financial surplus earned by IOP Publishing goes to support science through the activities of IOP."
arXiv.org
A searchable electronic archive and distribution server for research papers. Covered areas include physics and related disciplines, mathematics, nonlinear sciences, computational linguistics, and neuroscience.
CERN Document Server
Provides access to materials on a number of preprint servers in the physical sciences. Covers preprints, articles, books, journals, photographs, and much more, with over 800,000 bibliographic records and 360,000 full text documents.
HEPSearch
Indexes more than 500,000 high-energy physics related articles, including journal papers, preprints, e-prints, technical reports, conference papers and theses.
Open Access Directory - Physics
Identify electronic journals in the fields of Physics and Astronomy that are scholarly, peer-reviewed, full text, and accessible without cost.