BIOSIS Citation Index and PubMed are both good sources for journal articles that provide methods and protocols. There is some overlap in the journals that are covered, but in general, BIOSIS is more biology-oriented and PubMed is more medicine-oriented.
BIOSIS has two ways to search for methods/protocols on your topic.
1. Concept codes
BIOSIS uses a system of "concepts" that can help you whittle a large search down. The most relevant one is the major concept methods and techniques.
2. Literature type: Protocol (Note: This approach is very specific and sometimes results in zero hits.)
In PubMed, your search terms are automatically mapped to official terminology from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) vocabulary. Unfortunately, there is no single MeSH term for protocols. Instead, MeSH has standard "subheadings" (sh) for specific aspects of a subject, like dosage of a drug. Some of the more relevant ones are included below. You can copy and paste these onto the end of any search - be sure to use the brackets exactly as shown.
AND analysis [sh]
AND biosynthesis [sh]
AND chemistry [sh]
AND diagnostic use [sh]
AND instrumentation [sh]
AND methods [sh]
For example, if you want methods relating to cox2, you would type:cox2 AND methods [sh]
BIOSIS coverage is from 1926 to present and includes around 6,000 journals, conference proceedings, books, & technical reports in all aspects of biological sciences. The BIOSIS Citation Index database is an excellent database for all biological information, including marine biology, biological oceanography, marine ecology, developmental biology, and molecular biology. The platform also includes a version called BIOSIS Previews which lacks some cited-reference search abilities.
Covers over 5,700 journals in the biomedical and health sciences and years covered late 1940's - present, with additional older medical literature selectively added. Search using keywords or the controlled vocabulary called MeSH. PubMed will automatically match your keyword terms to MeSH terms. For additional tips, see the Library's PubMed page.
Indexes over 18,000 journals in all subjects (coverage back to 1900 for science and social science journals), as well as 80,000 books and more than 180K conference proceedings. Includes the popular "cited reference search" to identify papers which have cited a previously published work or author. Can also sort by "times cited" and find related articles based on commonly cited works.
UC Library Search contains information on all the resources (books, journal subscriptions, government publications, etc.) owned by the UC San Diego Library in print and online. Because protocols and methods can be scattered throughout the collection, it can be tricky to find them all. The sample search below if for a topic you enter and adds some keywords and limits to narrow your search to protocols & methods.
Just copy and paste the search below and replace the word yourtopic with your actual topic. This works best if you keep the topic fairly broad.
yourtopic AND (protocol* OR method*)
Some tips:
In most of our databases, you'll see a button next to each article labelled Get it At UC
Clicking the "Get it at UC" button may open up the article automatically, or you will see options to get the article:
- Online, if available (usually displays automatically, if not use the "Get it Online from" section to link to article)
- In print ("Find a Copy" section links to the record for the journal in UC Library Search)
- Via interlibrary loan ("Request it" section) if we don't have the article.
