Subject Guides: BIOL 5860/6850: Bioinformatics: Welcome

Reading Scientific Literature

New to reading scholarly articles? You are not alone! These resources will get you started and demystify the process.

How to Read a Scientific Article - The Basics
This article from the Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communication at Rice University describes the basic format of a scientific article, along with tips and questions to ask yourself as you're reading.

Ten Simple Rules for Reading a Scientific Paper
This excellent article laying out the structure of and tips for reading scientific research articles appeared in PLoS Computational Biology in 2020.
How to (Seriously) Read a Scientific Article
Advice from 12 scientists at different career stages on how to make sense of the scientific literature.
How to Read a Scientific Paper
Tips, encouragement, and commiseration for readers new to the scientific literature

Recommended Databases

These databases are your best bets for searching the scientific literature.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window Web of Science is the online version of the print and CD-ROM versions of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & humanities citation index; Science citation index (called Science citation index expanded, in online version); and, Social sciences citation index. (5 simultaneous users)
PubMed This link opens in a new window PubMed comprises more than 22 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of biomedicine and health, covering portions of the life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
Biosis Citation Index This link opens in a new window An index with abstracts to periodicals in biology and the life sciences. Provides access to biological and medical research findings, clinical studies, and discoveries of new organisms. Coverage is international, and includes agriculture, biochemistry, biomedicine, biotechnology, genetics, botany, ecology, microbiology, pharmacology, and zoology. (10 simultaneous users)
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window Provides access to much of the world's scholarly literature from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities. Results include peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports, and scholarly articles available on the Web.
MEDLINE (OVID) This link opens in a new window The complete MEDLINE database, including such topics as microbiology, delivery of health care, nutrition, pharmacology, and environmental health. The categories covered in the database include anatomy, organisms, diseases, chemicals and drugs, techniques and equipment, psychiatry and psychology, biological sciences, physical sciences, social sciences and education, technology, agriculture, food, industry, humanities, information science and communications, and health care.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window A Web database for scientific research that contains the full text of more than 1800 Elsevier Science journals in the life, physical, medical, technical, and social sciences available through the Internet. Contains abstracts and articles from the core journals in major scientific disciplines. The Libraries subscribes to the Freedom Collection along with several backfile collections: Chemistry Backfile, Earth & Planetary Sciences Backfile, Inorganic Chemistry Backfile, Organic Chemistry Backfile, Psychology Backfile, and Social Science Backfile.

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