NUTRITN 372 Writing in Nutrition

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.

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:

Accessing Age Group Filters in PubMed

1. Conduct a search in PubMed.
2. On the Results page, look on the left where the default filters are displayed.
3. At the bottom of the list, click the button “Additional filters.”
4. Click on “Age” and then click in the boxes for all the age categories you want to have available.
5. Click the “Show” button.
6. You should now have a filter section called “Age.”
7. Click on the one (or ones) you want to limit your search to studies identified as having that age group as subjects.

You can go through a similar process for other filters available.

When you read a scientific article, you do not want to read it straight through in order - at least not on the first time through. There are different ways to go through an article.

Here is how I usually approach scientific articles to get a basic understanding of what the article is about:

• I read the title and abstract to identify articles of interest. 
• I look at the authors and their affiliations, as well as funding disclosures to look for potential slants or biases.
• Next, I skip to the last paragraph of the Introduction, where the authors typically state what they plan to do in their study and their objectives.
• Then, I skim through the Methods (sometimes called Materials & Methods) and Results sections, focusing on the charts, images, and tables to get a basic understanding of what they did and what they measured.
• The Discussion/Conclusion section is what I read through after that, to get an understanding of whether the authors felt they met their objectives and what it means. In this section, they should mention limitations of their study and possibly suggest next steps for research.
• If I still want to know more, I go back and read through the full Introduction, Methods, and Results sections.