Find Science Research

Step 1: Search Specific Publications

Start with major journals such as Science or Nature.

Step 2: Try an Aggregator or Database

Google Scholar
GoogleScholar includes content from academic publishers, professional societies, and pre-print archives. It searches the full text of the article.
Google Scholar searches academic publishers, professional societies and pre-print archives.
Web of Science
The Web of Science (citation indexes), published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), is a multidisciplinary database that indexes major journals in the sciences and social sciences.

PRO TIP: Because the information stored about each article includes the article's cited reference list (often called its bibliography), you can also search the databases for articles that cite a known author or work. The "cited by" numbers you'll see in Web of Science are more accurate that those in Google Scholar, by an order of magnitude.
The Web of Science (citation indexes), published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), is a multidisciplinary database, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the sciences, social sciences and arts. It indexes major journals in these disciplines. Because the information stored about each article includes the article's cited reference list (often called its bibliography), you can also search the databases for articles that cite a known author or work.## ##The search interface at this web site provides access to Science Citation Index,Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index, as well as BIOSIS, CAB Abstracts, and Zoological Record.

Search Tips

Identifying a Topic

Type in a few keywords: do you notice any patterns in the results? Major topics, ideas, problems?
Try a new set of keywords: do these results give you a clearer picture?
Are you noticing a more general field of research? (E.g. ulcers --> oncology)
Are you noticing a specific sub-topic that might be of interest? (E.g. ecology --> microbiomes)
Try your keywords in a different resource (HOLLIS+, or news.google.com): does this give you a new angle on your topic?

Locating the most important recent publications on your topic

It's easy to find a source on a topic, but finding the best sources from the most reputable publications on the most important aspects of your topic can be a challenge! Here are some search tips:

Learn the appropriate index terms and use those as your search terms
Filter your results by academic discipline, date, impact factor, etc.
Look for review articles (aka "literature reviews"; sometimes titled "A Review of the Literature")
Find an important early study and trace it forward through a cited reference search
Find a recent study and follow its citation trail

Step 4: Look up relevant concepts, research fields, and methods

There's Wikipedia....and then there are the authoritative sources that the library has licensed for you. You may want to use both. The library resources listed below have been vetted and peer reviewed by the academy rather than by the public at large.

Use encyclopedias for a brief answer about a very specific concept, condition, or method:

Britannica Academic: a well-regarded all-purpose encyclopedia: compare to Wikipedia.

Oxford Reference Online : search across Oxford's collection of specialized encyclopedias.

PRO TIPS

Use Advanced Search and select "entry title" to return entries that are wholly focused on your search term
Sort results by Length to get really quick or really thorough answers
Pay attention to the book title as well as the entry title: the entry for "Cancer" in A Dictionary of Astronomy will be very different the one in the Concise Medical Dictionary!

Springer: search across the publisher's offerings, including specialized encyclopedias.

PRO TIPS:

Un-check the box that says "Include Preview-only content"
Select "reference entry" from the left-hand filter menu

Use books for a full overview of a topic (the chapter titles alone can be very informative!)

Oxford Very Short Introductions are compact books designed to give oyu a scholarly overview of a subject.