Soil & Crop Sciences Research Resources  Tags: agriculture natural_resources soils crops  

These quick tutorials show you tips for search strategies.

Example: I am looking for articles that talk about the control of the spread of whirling disease.

Bad search strategy: typing in all of this... I want  scholarly articles on whirling disease spread

Good search strategy: (whirling disease OR myxobolus cerebralis) AND (control OR spread)

For scholarly articles on whirling disease: search these databases
           1. Web of Science or
           2. Aquatic Science & Fisheries

I need to find scholarly/peer reviewed articles for my paper.

What are "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed" articles?

• Journal articles written by experts, faculty, or scholars on the topic
• The information has been evaluated by editors or other experts
• Articles most always contain a bibliography documenting sources

If you want to check to see if the journal is scholarly or peer-reviewed, search the journal title in Ulrich's Periodicals Directory.

Question: Is "Ecology" a scholarly/peer reviewed  journal?

If you look it up in Ulrich's, this is what you find...

Answer: Yes, Ecology is a refereed journal.

WAIT-don't just search Google. If you're looking for articles, use Research Databases .

When you are in the databases, click on the button to find articles with full-text.

Look at the list of Frequently Used Databases below to get started. There are tutorials if you would like more help. Contact your librarian for more assistance.

The Databases & Scholarly Journals page will also provide good information.

Search these Natural Resources Databases for journal articles (most articles in these databases are scholarly/peer reviewed). For a complete list of databases,
see the Find Electronic Resources & Databases page

Most CSU databases have an icon of Find It @ CSU, with the list of journal articles. You can click on the icon to see if we have an online version of the journal.

Find It looks like:  

Question: I found this article citation in Web of Science, is the article online?

To find out, when you are in the Web of Science database, click on the Find It @ CSU icon, you then see this page.

Click on the red "go" button to

The "go" takes you to a Webpage table of contents and you now can select to view the article:

abstract,  full-text, or PDF  (if you have these 3 options, select to view the article in  PDF)

Answer: YES the article you want is available online for CSU faculty, staff, or affiliates.

Here is a sneak peek of the PDF article:

Searching in the research databases can be a bit tricky. If you keep a few tips in mind, you will create better search strategies.

Boolean logic or boolean searching (named after George Boole) uses logical words/terms (and  or not)  to combine words or terms.

Truncation symbols, usually the asterik * symbol, give you extra searching options for the endings of words.

Wildcard symbols, usually the question mark ? symbol, replaces a letter or letters in the middle of a word.

Phrase searching, to keep words together as a phrase, you usually use the quote marks around the phrase "words together"

Searching by author, sometimes you search by last name, then use ONLY initials; other times you can use lastname, first name. Web of Science uses author lastname, FI MI  (last name, first initial middle initial: Wilson, AB)

Boolean Examples

humpback chub AND colorado:  articles must have the words humpback chub and also the word colorado

humpback chub OR gila cypha:  articles may have EITHER the words humpback chub OR gila cypha

      IT is always a good idea to search for both the common name and the scientific name for an animal, plant, organism, etc.

dolphins NOT Miami: articles must have the word dolphins but CAN NOT have the word Miami (NOT is very powerful, be careful how it is used in your searches.)

Truncation Examples

wol*   searches for wolf, wolves, wolverine

agricultur*  searches for agriculture, agriculturally, agricultural

Wildcard Examples

wom?n  searches for woman or women

col?r  searches for color or colour

Phrase Examples

"global warming" keeps the words together so articles must have these two words side-by-side, global warming

Author Examples

Be careful when you search databases for an author. Sometimes the databases use last name and first name, sometimes they use last name and just the first initial and middle initial. For example if you are searching for articles by Dr. Barry Noon you might search by:

Noon, Barry
Noon B
Noon B* (the * is if you don't know the middle initial of their name, the * acts as a "wild card")