Honors Science FIG: Library Research Guide

Your Contact Librarian: Victoria Mitchell
14 Onyx Bridge
T: (541) 346.3076

General Information

Books, particularly reference books, are a good way to get started and get some general information on a topic. They usually also provide bibliographies for further reading. The Science Library has many specialized scientific dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, etc. And while you're here, you can look over our new video game collection.

A few potentially helpful references:

American Men & Women of Science, 23rd ed. 2007. (7 vols.) SCI REF Q141 .A47

Berinstein, Paula. Alternative Energy: Facts, Statistics, Issues. SCI REF TJ808 .B467 2001

Dictionary of Chemistry SCI REF QD5 .D4985 2000 Also online

Dictionary of Energy. SCI REF TJ163.16 .D53 2006

Dictionary of Physics SCI REF QC5 .D496 2000 Also online (2003 ed.)

Encyclopedia of Global Change (2 vols.) SCI REF GE149 .E47 2002 Also online

Environmental Encyclopedia SCI REF GE19 .E38 2003 Also online

Macmillan Encyclopedia of Energy.(3 vols) SCI REF TJ163.28 .M33 2001

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Finding Articles

A very good, interdisciplinary science journal article database, that covers mostly peer-reviewed journals is

Web of Science

In addition to being able to search by topical keywords, author, etc., Web of Science has the special feature of showing you who has cited an article, and how many times it has been cited. This is useful in a couple of ways: it can lead you to more recent articles on the same topic, and it gives an indication of how influential an article or author has been on other researchers.

OneSearch

If your research is going to take you into more specialized areas, I recommend going to OneSearch Advanced Search, and selecting from among the categories and subcategories. For instance, if you are researching nuclear energy, you would want to explore the Physics category.

You can then either search the combined databases via OneSearch, or select an individual database to search from among those listed (by clicking on the database name.)

Evaluation of Sources

Start with this excellent web page "Critical Evaluation of Information Sources", created by UO librarian Ted Smith. It can be applied to both printed sources (books, articles) and web sites.

Biographical Sources (for evaluating authors)

see American Men & Women of Science, above, under Reference books. In addition to looking for authors' web sites, and searching for other articles or books by or about them, here are some other sources:

Biographies Plus Illustrated This database contains a lot of information on the individuals it covers, but you have to be pretty well known to be in here.

Biography and Genealogy Master Index This indexes a large number of biographical dictionaries and other sources. Many of the sources listed in Biography and Genealogy Master Index are located in the UO Libraries (most of them in Knight.)

Contemporary Authors Contains information on modern authors, and could be a good place to find out more about science writers and journalists who are not scientists.

Different types of periodicals

You can make certain assumptions about the credibility and reliability of information based on the publication. The most reliable sources are those which are considered "scholarly" and are usually peer-reviewed. How do you know if a periodical is scholarly?

This guide can help you distinguish between scholarly and not: Scholarly or Popular?

See also this handy, printable sheet (pdf) that shows and describes the whole range of periodicals, from scholarly journals to tabloids: Types of Periodicals

**For evaluation just of web sites, I recommend the following**:

Onet.TUTOR: Evaluating Web Sites

This is a nice little tutorial-type site from Ohio State, very easy to use.

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly, Or, Why it's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources

From New Mexico State University. See particularly "Criteria" and "Examples".

Peer-review

"Peer reviewed" is often used interchangeably with "refereed" (See "Refereed", below.) Peer review is the process of review by qualified outsiders known as "peers": that is, they are experts in the same field, who identify manuscripts, proposals, grants and other works that worthy of publication. In the peer review process, authors submit their work to scholarly (including scientific) academic journals, who in turn, send manuscripts an editorial board or similar group of peers to determine the article's acceptability, validity, reproducibility of results, grammar and scholarly use of theory. Authors may then be asked to edit or revise before their work is accepted for publication.

For more information, see this excellent pdf guide on peer review, and why it is particularly important in the sciences.
Also, this Wikipedia article on peer review is actually quite good --at least when I looked at it. You cannot always rely on Wikipedia as it can be edited by just about anyone, at any time. For a humorous demonstration of this phenomenon, watch this excerpt of the Colbert Report on Comedy Central (looks like you have to sit through a brief commercial first, though.)

Refereed-- A publication that has been peer reviewed This involves external assessment by at least one independent reviewer. In the case of a journal article or conference publication, the independent reviewer (or referee) cannot be a member of the editorial board. See also Peer reviewed.

Maintained by: Victoria Mitchell, vmitch@uoregon.edu