BIMM 110: Molecular Basis of Human Disease: Journal Articles

Below are a number of databases that can be helpful in finding research articles for this course, depending on your topic. You can find more specialized databases below, or via the A-Z Databases list. Or, ask a librarian for recommendations.

Be sure to set up your computer for network access. PubMed is free, but requires UCSD network access to download and read full-text articles from licensed journals.

Recommended Databases:

Browsing Journals

BrowZine is a tool that enables a "virtual shelf" experience for browsing journals in our collections. It is available in a web interface as well as an app for iOS and Android devices.  UCSD only.

• Biology: Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
• Medicine: Endocrine Diseases (incl Diabetes)
• Medicine: Neurological Diseases (incl many Alzheimer's/Dementia journals)
• Medicine: Viral Diseases

• Research (primary) articles 
  • Report on the results of an original research study. 
  • Methods section: describe the details of how the study was completed. 
  • Results and data: often include charts, reports from lab equipment, tables etc.
  • Discussion: describes what the research shows in context of other and future planned research. 
• Review (secondary) articles: 
  • Summarize already-published studies. 
  • If there is a "methods" section it will describe how they did their literature search. 
  • May have explicit inclusion/exclusion criteria
  • Often will provide charts or other visualization of what the included studies conclude
  • Will have an extensive reference list.  
  • These are useful starting point, but are not considered "primary research articles."

If you are only finding reviews, here are some things to try: 

• Bring up the record for the review article in a database like PubMed or Google Scholar. 
• Both of these databases have a quick link for "similar" or "related" articles. 
• Use the reference list at the end of the article to see what work they have cited. 
• Try searching by the first or last author to see if they've written more on this topic
• If the original article is at least a year or two old, see who has cited it since - Google Scholar is especially good for this. 

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