Searching the Scientific Literature
Before you begin to design an experiment, it’s important to find out what is already known about the question you are interested in asking. This will help you to avoid simply duplicating work that others have already done, suggest techniques that have been successful in the past, and (hopefully) inspire you to answer the questions raised by other researchers’ work. That what science is all about — constantly building on what we already know. You will also need to discuss previous research in the Introduction and Discussion sections of your research paper.
Organizing Your Search:
Organizing and executing a successful literature search is a skill that can only be learned by experience (which is one reason instructors assign so many papers!). But a few tips can help you get started and avoid some of the worst frustrations.
The first tip is to start general and then narrow your search more and more as you go along. Many students start by looking for information on the species they plan to study. Searches on a specific organism may produce no results if the organism is obscure, or thousands of irrelevant papers if the organism is well studied. Begin by framing your research topic in general terms. Try to see where it fits into the broader body of theory. Are you interested in studying how mosquitoes choose when and where to bite? You might want to start with some reading on animal foraging, and parasite-host interactions. Want to research the spread of Leafy Spurge in the coulees of Lethbridge? Begin by learning about competition and plant ecology. Almost any research question you can invent will fit somewhere into the broader context of biology. Seeing your question in broader terms is one secret to a successful literature search.
The second tip is to be patient and methodical. Don’t get frustrated if you don’t find what you’re looking for immediately. Conducting a literature search can be a time-consuming exercise, especially for a beginner, and you need to set aside sufficient time. Get started early so you have time to make a few false starts, and to obtain articles not available in your local library through interlibrary loans. If a search using one set of key words doesn’t work, try slightly different terms. Whenever you find a relevant book or or article, check its reference list to see if the author cites other helpful sources. If you really get stuck, get help from a librarian, your instructor or other students.
Sources Available:
Many sources of information are available, some more reliable, some less so. Here is a list of some sources you might use in researching your topic, ranked in order of their usefulness and reliability.
Journal Articles: Peer-reviewed journals (also called the primary literature, or refereed journals) should be the backbone of your library research. Almost all original research papers are published in these journals. They derive their name from the process of peer review that every paper undergoes before it is published. The manuscript submitted by the author is sent out to several other researchers with expertise in the same field (the author’s peers). They send back comments and criticisms which could range from “It’s crap. Throw it in the garbage.” to “It’s going to revolutionize our field.” Typically, however, the reviewers offer some specific suggestions for improvements which should be made before the paper is published. This process helps ensure that the worst papers don’t get published, and all papers are improved as much as possible. It’s not perfect, but it works reasonably well most of the time.
Because of the process of peer-review, and because the research is being reported firsthand by the people who carried it out, articles in peer-reviewed journals are the most useful and reliable sources of information available. They also tend to be written in technical jargon, so as a student, you may want to begin your research with more general sources which can provide background information and help you learn the language of the field (see below). Many journals also publish review articles summarizing all recent publications on a particular research topic. These reviews are useful both as direct references, and as a quick way to locate many relevant papers.
There is no quick and foolproof way to identify a peer-reviewed journal, although some state this on the copyright page. A magazine full of research papers (organized in the IMRAD format and full of citations) is likely to be peer-reviewed. With a little experience you will quickly come to know most of the useful journals in your field of study.
Hundreds of thousands of papers are published every year in thousands of different journals, and it can be a daunting task to find the information you need in this sea of information, but computer databases have helped make this process much simpler. See here for some tips on how to use computer journal indexes available through the U. of L. library (and other library resources) or ask a librarian for help. Other databases are available in the library in print form, and as you continue your academic career you will encounter other online databases not available at the University of Lethbridge. Learning to search these databases is an essential skill for anyone involved in science.
Special-Topic Books: Another detailed and reliable source of information is special-topic books written by experts in a given field. These do not typically go through formal peer-review, but the research results they describe will also be published in the primary literature. These books may be written by a single author, or by a group of authors each contributing a chapter within their specialty.
Textbooks: Textbooks are not usually as detailed and up-to-date as recent journal articles, and they are not peer-reviewed, but because they are written for students, they provide background, define terminology, and in general explain things that journal articles simply assume the reader knows. Because of this they can provide an excellent starting point for your research. You may not end up citing all the information you read in textbooks, but it will give you a “springboard” to understand the more detailed and technical information found in journals.
Encyclopedias: Encyclopedias, and other general-purpose references should not be a large part of your research at the university level. The articles are typically not in sufficient depth to be useful, and information is often out-of-date.
Magazines, newspapers etc.: Information aimed at the general public often contains factual errors and should be taken with a large grain of salt. Information can be cited to make a specific point about public perceptions, but these sources should not be used as part of a literature review. There are a few magazines such as New Scientist and Scientific American, aimed at a scientifically literate audience, which are useful references, but you should still try to find the original journal articles from which their stories are drawn.
World Wide Web sources: Information on the web is only as reliable as the person posting it. Some excellent scientific information is available via the internet. Some peer-reviewed journals now publish the full text of their articles on-line (see the library links above for more information), and these can be cited identically to their printed counterparts. But the substantive information is still outweighed by large amounts of pseudoscience and speculation. It is important to know the author and publisher of any information you are taking off the web, and to pass this information on to your readers (see Citations). Keep in mind that web publications can disappear at any time, making them less reliable as references than their paper counterparts.