Biology

A guide to resources in Biology at UMass and beyond.

QuickList of Life Science Databases

BIOSIS Citation Index This link opens in a new window
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Indexes content from journals, conferences, books, and U.S. patents covering the life sciences and biomedical research since 1926.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
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Index to articles from peer-reviewed journals in all disciplines.Search by cited reference, topic, author, and more. Arts and Humanities covers 1975-present; Social Sciences 1900-present; and Science 1900-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
BioOne This link opens in a new window
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Bioscience research journals in full text. Covers 179 titles from 136 society and nonprofit publishers, including some open access journals. Coverage varies; earliest is 1994-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
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National Library of Medicine's comprehensive database of citations to medical journal articles, with links to UMass-subscribed full text, 1946-present. PubMed includes all MEDLINE content, plus content from additional journals and books in the life sciences.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

eLife
eLife is a researcher-led, open access digital publication for outstanding research in life science and biomedicine. Editor-in-chief is 2013 Nobel Prize Winner Randy Schekman.

Zoological Record This link opens in a new window
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Citations to periodical articles and other scholarly literature on zoology, biochemistry, behavior, ecology evolution, and genetics, 1864-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
CAB Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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CAB focuses on international development - providing access to the world’s applied life sciences literature, 1973 to present.

UMass Libraries' subscription includes: CAB Abstracts Archive; VetMed Resource.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
BioMed Central This link opens in a new window
Collection of almost 300 peer-reviewed open access journals, covering a wide variety of medical and life science topics.
Content is freely available for use by all.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
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Full-text scholarly journals and books in the sciences and the social sciences provided by Elsevier. Dates of coverage vary.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
AccessScience This link opens in a new window
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Covers all major scientific disciplines and offers links to primary research material, videos and exclusive animations, plus specially designed curriculum maps for teachers.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Finding Full Text & Interlibrary Loan

When you find an article you want, you can click on the UMass search button to get the full text.

The UMass search button connects to a tool that will find the full text online if it is available in any of the databases UMass has access to.

It will also search the library catalog to see if the library has it in print.

If an article or book is unavailable at UMass Amherst, you can get it using our Interlibrary Loan service. There will be a link to Request this resource through Interlibrary Loan on the window that opens after you click the UMass search button.

Here's a screenshot as an example of you might see after clicking the UMass search button.

More about Interlibrary Loan

To log into Interlibrary Loan use your UMass NetID and password (same as what you use for SPIRE and Moodle or Blackboard).

The first time you use Interlibrary Loan, you will be prompted to fill out a profile form, so we know who you are and how to contact you when your item arrives.

NOTE: In the Delivery Preferences section of the profile form, you must choose a Loan Delivery Method and a Pickup Location. All article requests are delivered electronically, so these options do not apply to articles.

After completing the profile, you should then see a pre-populated article request form. Make sure all the required fields are completed (sometimes they don't all transfer to the form), then submit it and usually in 1-2 business days you'll get an email that your article has arrived! The email will include a link into the Interlibrary Loan system, where your article PDF will be available to print or download.

More Databases to Try

PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
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Published by the American Psychological Association (APA), PsycINFO is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed journal literature in psychology, behavioral science and mental health - 2,500 journal titles indexed - 2.8 million records - 1887 to present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Gale In Context: Environmental Studies This link opens in a new window
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Search by topic and/or geography: agriculture, food, energy, pollution, economic development, social factors and in journals, magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias as well as primary sources.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
SPORTDiscus with Full Text This link opens in a new window
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Full-text sports and sport medicine journals. Subject coverage: coaching, consumer health, exercise science, health education, kinesiology, nutrition, occupational health/safety, physical education, physical therapy, sport sciences. Includes the NCAA News, 2005 to present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
AGRICOLA This link opens in a new window
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Covers agriculture; plant and animal sciences; forestry; entomology; soil and water resources; agricultural economics and engineering; alternative farming; nutrition, 1970-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Is the journal Peer Reviewed?

Many of your assignments will require you to locate articles from Peer Reviewed journals. Some databases include an option to limit your search results to only articles from peer reviewed journal.

Other databases, like PubMed, do not. There are several ways you can find out if a journal is peer reviewed.

One of the easiest ways is to look the journal title up using the eJournals link on the UMass Amherst Libraries home page. Above the journal title, it will say peer reviewed if it is.
Or, you can look it up in the Ulrich's database (linked below). Peer reviewed (also called refereed) journals will have this symbol next to the title:

How to find out if a Journal is Peer Reviewed
Handout with step-by-step instructions on how to find out if a journal is Peer-Reviewed

Ulrich's Web This link opens in a new window
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Comprehensive index of periodicals types, published worldwide.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Biology

Tips for Searching Databases

ScholarWorks

QuickList of Life Science Databases

Finding Full Text & Interlibrary Loan

More Databases to Try

Is the journal Peer Reviewed?