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NRC 100 Environment and Society

Fish ecology and conservation assignment

Types of sources you need to learn about the life cycle of the fish species and the conservation challenges:

  • at least one popular or news article 
  • at least one scientific journal article and
  • at least one other type of source
    (this could be a government report, an NGO or non-profit report, encyclopedia, trade journal, or a book)

Best article databases for fish assignment

For the fish species assignment, these 2 have popular press articles, as well as scientific/scholarly ones.

  • GREENR: Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources. It groups information by type of publication: e.g., academic journal articles, magazines, newspapers, podcasts, encyclopedia entries, etc.
  • Environment Index - for articles from scientific, legal, and popular journals, 1950s- present.

​More scientific literature for fisheries:

Aquatic Science Collection
Journal articles, book chapters, reports, and conference proceedings published in the field of aquatic science, some in full text, 1965-present.

Agricola
Broad coverage of "applied biology" including aquaculture and fisheries. Incluldes journal articles, book chapters, monographs, theses, patents, software, audiovisual materials, and technical reports. 1970-present.

CAB Abstracts
Indexes journal articles and other material on applied biology, including fisheries, from the British Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux. 1910 forward.

Other useful databases, specific to general:

Zoological Record - Animal (including fish) research from 1864 forward.
BIOSIS Citation Index - Biology research from 1969 forward.
Biological and Agricultural Index - Research literature from 1984 forward.
Web of Science; Science Citation Abstracts - High impact research in all sciences from 1900 forward. Search by "cited reference."

Tips for effective searching

Tips to find species info: 

1. Search both common and scientific names. Scientific articles may use one, the other, or both.
    Be aware that sometimes the scientific name changes over time!

    Connect them with OR - for example:

      Brook trout or Salvelinus fontinalis

Using OR makes the results set bigger.

2. To find habitat or life history info, link species name with those terms using AND:

      (Brook trout or Salvelinus fontinalis) and
          (habitat or life history)

Using AND makes the results set smaller.


The parentheses ( ) makes the logic work.  If you don't understand how, please ask!

3. Use a wildcard, e.g. the asterisk (*),  question mark (?) or dollar sign ($) to widen your search. Each platform has its own rules. 

     In EBSCO databases, searching the term fish* will find anything starting with F-I-S-H
      including fish, fished, fishing, fisher, fisheries, etc.

Some platforms, including Google/Google Scholar, do this automatically (without a symbol).

4. Use the database tools to narrow a search with many hits - narrow by date, or type of publication (source type), language, or geographic area.

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