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Biology
Journal Databases
You can find articles on your biology topic by searching in journal databases. The sections below will introduce you to recommended biology databases and answer questions about journal databases:
Recommended journal databases for biology research
How do I find articles on my topic in a journal database?
Tutorial: How to Find Journal Articles
What is a peer-reviewed journal?
Recommended journal databases for biology research
You must access the databases below through the Libraries' website when you are on-campus or off-campus. When you do, you are recognized as being affiliated to UNT and allowed into the database. You will be asked to enter your EUID and password when you are off-campus.
Note: The links below take you to alphabetical lists of resources. Scroll down the list to find the journal database.
Academic Search Complete - Recommended for freshmen and sophomores
Academic Search Complete is a scholarly collection providing full text journal coverage for nearly all academic areas of study - including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, life and medical sciences, and ethnic studies. Full text is available for nearly 4,600 scholarly publications, with coverage dating back to 1975.
Agricola - recommended for all audiences
Agricola (AGRICultural OnLine Access) via EbsoHost serves as the catalog and index to the collections of the National Agricultural Library. Journal articles, books, conference proceedings, and technical reports are included in Agricola. The earliest information is from the 15th century. Agricola covers all aspects of agriculture and allied disciplines, such as animal and veterinary sciences, entomology, plant sciences, forestry, aquaculture and fisheries, farming systems, agricultural economics, extension and education, food and human nutrition, and earth and environmental sciences. Full text is not available through Agricola but UNT may have the information. Please check the UNT Library Catalog.
Biosis Previews - recommended for upperclassmen, graduate students and faculty
Biosis Previews is the premier database for Biology and related disciplines, and replaces Biological Abstracts and Biological Abstracts RRM. Coverage is from 1989 and includes journal articles, proceedings, and patents. Limited to 8 simultaneous users.
Environment Complete - recommended for all audiences
Environmental Issues & Policy Index via EBSCOHost offers coverage in applicable areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more. It provides indexing and detailed abstracts for over 1,000 international journals. Coverage ranges as far back as 1950.
JSTOR - recommended for all audiences
JSTOR provides access to archived backfiles of journals in Arts & Sciences, Language & Literature, General Science, Ecology & Botany, and Music. The full-text of journals is provided for each title beginning with Volume 1. Recent volumes may or may not be included, depending on the agreement between JSTOR and the publishers.
MedLine via EbscoHost - recommended for upperclassmen, graduate students and faculty
MEDLINE via EBSCOhost provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses (MeSH) indexing with tree numbers, tree hierarchy and explosion capabilities to search abstracts from over 4,000 current biomedical journals.
ProQuest Online - recommended for freshmen and sophomores
Proquest Online provides searching for ABI/INFORM Global, Research Library, and ProQuest Newpapers. The Research Library is a multidisciplinary database including more than 3,950 titles—over 2,700 in full text—from 1971 forward. It features a highly-respected, diversified mix of scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers.
Science and Technology Collection - recommended for freshmen and sophomores
Science & Technology Collection by EbscoHost contains over 800 leading full text journals covering scientific and technical information. Subjects covered include astrophysics, biology, chemistry, computer technology, geology, physics, archaeology, and materials science.
SciFinder Scholar - recommended for upperclassmen and sophomores, graduate students and faculty
SciFinder Scholar is the electronic version of Chemical Abstracts. Over 1600 chemistry journals are indexed cover-to-cover and 8,000+ journals are monitored. Records go back to 1907. This resource is limited to 3 simultaneous users.
How do I find articles on my topic in a journal database ?
You find articles about your topic by searching the records (or article entries) in a journal database. Some databases (indexes) have records that contain just the article's citation, and others (abstracts) have records that contain the citation and article summary (abstract). Some databases have article records that contain the full text of the article. All databases will look through the article records for the search terms you enter and pull up only records that include those terms.
Most databases have both a basic search screen and an advanced search screen where you can enter your search terms. I highly recommend using the advanced search because you can use Boolean statements to build a more tailored search that will retrieve more relevant articles. If you've never done Boolean searching, don't worry because it's not difficult. See Search Strategies to Find Journal Articles and Save Time for instructions.
What is a journal database?
A journal database is a collection of information from articles, which is gathered from a group of journals. The database is called an index when the only information collected is the citation of each article. The database is called an abstract when the citation and abstract (or summary) of each article is collected. When the article information is added to the database, it is given subject headings to describe the content of the article. The combined information forms a record for each article.
What is a peer-reviewed journal?
A peer-reviewed journal is one that requires review and approval of submitted articles before they are published. Most scientific journals will have a large group of reviewers, all of whom have a specialty in the journal's field. When an article is received, it is sent out to the reviewers who are most familiar with the subject matter. The reviewers carefully read the article to check whether the experiments were done correctly, the results are valid and the conclusions are logical. If the reviewers approve the article, they usually send suggestions back to the author for further experiments or improvements in the writing. When the revisions are completed and approved, then the article is finally published.
