Introduction to Toxicology
EV 460/660 & BI 460/660
Fall 2014
Tips on Searching for Literature Articles
You are required to find primary literature articles for your research paper on a toxicology topic.
This handout is a short list of tips and suggestions to facilitate your search and to make it more
productive. It is likely that your problem will be finding too much relevant literature, rather than finding
too little.
Literature searches have changed dramatically over the years and have gotten much easier and
much quicker. However, you will still need to budget adequate time to conduct a thorough literature
search. Concentrate on finding the newest articles. An article published in 2014 will likely include
coverage of the relevant literature published before 2013. An article published in 2007 will tell you
nothing about what has happened in the area in the last seven years. You should not include older
articles (before 2010) unless they are of particular historical interest and importance.
In the past, literature searches typically meant hours of time pouring through print indexes and
abstracts and wandering dusty stacks of moldy, bound journals. Today, you can electronically search
massive databases and retrieve most desired articles online.
Vary your search terms and try different sources for the most effective search. Use a
combination of different sources to find full-text versions of articles of particular interest.
I suggest that you equip yourself with a flash drive to store PDF files and a Word document. Use
the Word document to save notes, abstracts, and other information related to your search. I will typically
have three browsers open at the same time to quickly jump between different sources (Kent Library,
Scholar Google, and regular Google).
Kent Library library.semo.edu
You can access thousands of online, full-text journals through Kent Library. It is easiest to
conduct searches from on-campus computers, but you may also conduct searches from off campus by
logging in using your Southeast key.
At the opening page for Kent Library, select the link for Articles and Databases on the start page.
The next page shows Search A-Z databases. Some of the most useful databases for this class are
described below. Access these databases by clicking on the A-Z link.
PubMed and PubMed Central These two databases are maintained by the National Library of
Medicine. You can retrieve many full text articles. You can limit your searches by years, language, and
full text. These are among the best databases to use for many topics related to the class.
Additional useful databases for class-related searches include: ABI/Inform Complete (ProQuest),
Academic Search Premier (EBSCOhost), ArticleFirst (FirstSearch), General Science Full Text (Wilson),
Medline (FirstSearch), Proquest Research Library (ProQuest), and Wilson OmniFile (Wilson)
Use different databases. Each database will return a different subset of articles. Use limiting
features (year, language, peer review, full text, etc) where available.
Many of the searches will return only a bibliographic citation or a bibliographic citation and
abstract. Look for the link “Find Full Text”. When you click on this link, software programs scan for other
database access to the full text article. Often you will get lucky and it will find a link to the full text article.
However, this will not always get you the full text article, but don’t give up if it looks like a really good
article. Copy the bibliographic information to your Word document and save it.
Use the bibliographic information to try to find the full text article through Scholar Google or
regular Google. Here is another trick. Try to find the personal web page of the first author of the article.
It helps if you made note of the institutional affiliation of the author. Many scientists and professors
maintain personal web pages with pdf copies of their articles on their personal web pages.
Toxline
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?TOXLINE
This database of toxicology literature is part of TOXNET (Toxicology Data Network) maintained
by the National Library of Medicine. You may want to explore other parts of TOXNET. Toxline is a
powerful database for finding articles on toxicology topics. Use the Limit function to restrict your search
to certain years and language. Use the Sort function to get the retrieved articles in descending
chronological order. You will get bibliographic information and abstracts. The downside is that it does
not give you full-text copies. However, you can use the bibliographic information to try to find the full text
version through Kent Library, Scholar Google, regular Google, or the author’s web page.
Scholar Google
http://scholar.google.com/
This is a very useful and powerful resource for finding articles. You can use the advanced search
feature to limit your search to certain years, journals or authors. It will return some full-text articles.
Select the “All # versions” link to see if one of the versions is full text. You will have to work to find those
articles that are not full text (see above). Other useful features of Scholar Google are that it identifies
related articles and also identifies articles that have cited each article. Both of these features are very
useful for exploring the literature.
If you use Scholar Google at an on-campus computer and click on the "Find Full Text" link, the
software will automatically connect to Kent Library and use the electronic resources of Kent Library to
look for a full text copy of the article. This only works if you are using an on campus computer hooked to
the campus network.
Google
www.google.com
We are all familiar with Google. This is a less desirable way to search than those described
above. However, regular Google can be useful when all else fails and your really, really want to find a
full text version of a particular article. Regular Google can be useful for locating the personal web pages
of authors. Publishers often provide the author with a pdf copy of their publication and allow authors to
post it on their personal website or to send a copy in response to a request. If you can find the author’s
personal web page they may have a pdf copy of their articles available. If you can find the email address
of the author, send them an email and ask for a pdf copy of the article as an attachment to a return email
to you. Most authors are happy to send you a copy of their paper.
Also see: http://cstl-csm.semo.edusr/overmann/tox/ websites.htm