Scholarly Articles - BIO 111 - Cell and Molecular Biology - Research Guides at Eastern Kentucky University

Finding Articles in Biology

For the BIO 111 lab report assignment, you are required to have 4 scholarly sources with experimental design (original research). Articles with experimental design have the following features:

Independent & dependent variables
A testable hypothesis
A conclusion that speaks to causality
A control group

For an example of what original research with experimental design looks like in the Biology field see Chain reactions linking acorns to gypsy moth outbreaks and Lyme disease risk

Recommended Discovery Tools and Platforms

Agricola
Agricola (AGRICultural OnLine Access) is a database created by the U.S. National Agricultural Library. It focuses on resources connected to agriculture, food, and the life sciences. For biology students, this means you’ll find articles, reports, and government documents on topics such as, plant and animal biology, soil science and ecosystems, genetics and crop science, environmental impacts of agriculture, food safety and nutrition.

These journals are good places to start searching for scholarly articles that are experimenting with things like germination, seeds, and your independent variable.
ScienceDirect
Science Direct is strongest in the hard sciences and applied research. For biology, this means you’ll find scholarly articles with a lot of experimental data, methods, and figures. It’s especially good if you are looking at biology through the lens of chemistry, medicine, or environmental science—for example, biochemistry, toxicology, or climate change impacts on ecosystems. Think of ScienceDirect as a place to see how biology is studied in laboratory and applied research settings.

Science Direct searches more journals than Agricola and different search features. This is your next best bet if you've already searched Agricola.
Wiley Online Library
Wiley is a database with a broader view of life sciences, including biology’s connections to ecology, behavior, zoology, and evolution, alongside molecular and cellular biology. You’ll find scholarly articles that focus more on organisms, populations, and ecosystems. Wiley often publishes research that bridges biology with the social or environmental sciences, making it useful if you want to see the “big picture” of how biology interacts with the natural world.

Wiley searches more journals than Agricola, but less than Science Direct, and is the last database you should try searching in before contacting a librarian.

Database	What It Focuses On	Best For	Example Journals/Content
ScienceDirect (Elsevier)	Hard sciences, applied biology, biomedical and chemical connections. Heavy on experimental data, figures, and lab-based research.	Finding detailed experimental studies, biomedical/biochemical biology, environmental chemistry, toxicology.	Journal of Molecular Structure, Toxicology Letters, Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety
Wiley Online Library	Broader life sciences: ecology, evolution, zoology, organismal and ecosystem-level biology. Strong in connecting biology to environment and behavior.	Exploring species, populations, ecosystems, and evolutionary studies. Great for projects involving biodiversity, conservation, or ecological patterns.	Molecular Ecology, Journal of Zoology, Ecology Letters
AGRICOLA (U.S. National Agricultural Library)	Agriculture, food systems, and applied life sciences. Includes journals, reports, and government publications.	Research on plants, crops, soil, food safety, and sustainability. Strong for climate change, agriculture, and biodiversity projects.	USDA reports, extension publications, agricultural journals

Accessing Articles on the Web - LibKey Nomad

LibKey Nomad is a browser extension that can help streamline your research process and open up even more resources for you. If you are browsing a website that has journal article or ebook citations, LibKey Nomad will detect those you can access through EKU Libraries and provide a link to that article or ebook. You can get library subscribed articles directly from sites such as Wikipedia and Pubmed.

For more information about installing, read the EKU Libraries LibKey Nomad FAQ.

Accessing Unavailable Articles - Library Express

Did you find a great article, but you are getting a message that you don't have full text access (or you're being asked to pay for it!)? EKU Libraries has a robust Library Express service that can get a copy of the article for you at no charge to you. Check out the Library Express webpage for more information and a list of frequently asked questions.