Journals and Books - Biology - Online Laboratory Resources - LibGuides at University of California San Diego

Journal Articles: BIOSIS and PubMed

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 Citation Index

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.

- From the main search screen: Put your topic in one search field box
- In the second box select Major Concept and type "methods and techniques" in quotes

2. Literature type: Protocol (Note: This approach is very specific and sometimes results in zero hits.)

- Enter your topic in the first search box on the default search screen.
- For the second box, use the pulldown on the right to change the search to “literature type” and select protocol from the menu.

PubMed

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]

Selected Biology Databases

BIOSIS Citation Index
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. This is the preferred database to use over BIOSIS Previews because you can search for cited references.
PubMed
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.
Zoological Record
The Zoological Record database has extensive coverage of zoology from 1864-present. Indexes over 4,500 journals, books, conference papers, & selected dissertations in zoology, and includes a very good subject vocabulary and helpful taxonomic hierarchies.
Web of Science
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.

Google Scholar
Covers many of the journals available online via the UCSD Library. Lacks many advanced search features available in other databases listed above, but is very useful for finding articles when you have only partial information or need to search something like a specific reagent or cell line.

Books: Print and Online

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:

After you have some search results you can use "Modify Search" to add limits like date, language, material type, and location.
If you are specifically interested in electronic resources, select that collection from the main Roger page before you start a search.

How do I get the article?

In most of our databases, you'll see a button next to each article labelled UC e-Links

Clicking the UC-eLinks 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 Roger)
- Via interlibrary loan ("Request it" section) if we don't have the article.