Library Guides: Plant and Microbial Biology: Articles

Top Research Databases

Use one or more of these databases to find articles, conference proceedings, reports, and other materials relevant to research in PMB.

Look for to link to full text.

Agricultural & Environmental Science Database This link opens in a new window
Find citations for journals, conference proceedings, books, reports, and government publications in the agricultural and environmental sciences. [1960 - present].
AES incorporates the formerly titled "Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management" database - which includes Environmental Impact Statements - plus the databases AGRICOLA (1970-current) and TOXLINE (1999-current).
bioRxiv This link opens in a new window
bioRxiv is a free open access archive for unpublished preprints in the life sciences.
bioRxiv (pronounced "bio-archive") is a free online archive and distribution service for unpublished preprints in the life sciences. It is operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a not-for-profit research and educational institution. By posting preprints on bioRxiv, authors are able to make their findings immediately available to the scientific community and receive feedback on draft manuscripts before they are submitted to journals.
BIOSIS Previews This link opens in a new window
Citations for journal articles, conference papers, and books on a wide variety of biological and biomedical topics. [1926 - present]
Indexes journals, books, and conference proceedings are indexed on a wide variety of biological and biomedical topics. An electronic version to the print counterparts, Biological Abstracts and Biological Abstracts/RRM.
CAB Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Indexes journals, monographs, conferences, books, annual reports, and other sources from the agricultural literature and from more than 100 countries. [1910 - present]
Access to this resource will be discontinued effective 12/31/2023 due to library budget cuts. Covers topics including biodiversity, biotechnology, pest control, environmental pollution, animal science, nutrition and food technology, crop production, natural resources, forestry, environmental policy, and rural development. Note: The header says "CABI: CAB Abstracts and Global Health"
Embase This link opens in a new window
Search for biomedical literature citations. Embase is a key resource for conducting systematic reviews and researching evidence-based medicine. [dates vary]
Indexes journals, including many not in Medline, from over 90 countries, and indexes conference abstracts from many conferences. Broad biomedical scope with strong coverage in drug, pharmaceutical, and toxicological research including economic evaluation.
Faculty Opinions This link opens in a new window
Highlights and reviews the most interesting papers published in the biological sciences and medicine, based on the recommendations of a faculty of selected leading researchers. (Formerly called F1000, Faculty of 1000). Note: All article recommendations and clinical trial evaluations are freely accessible with registration. Faculty Reviews are no longer accessible; please use Scopus, or Web of Science as alternative resources.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Search across many disciplines and sources including articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Lists journal articles, books, preprints, and technical reports in many subject areas (though more specialized article databases may cover any given field more completely). Can be used with "Get it at UC" to access the full text of many articles.

Use these instructions to set up access to full-text via UCB subscriptions.

Ovid Medline This link opens in a new window
The Ovid interface to MEDLINE. Citations and abstracts for articles published in medicine, life sciences, public health, health administration, veterinary medicine, nursing, molecular biology, genetics, and more. [Mid-19th century - present]
MEDLINE is the core content that makes up PubMed and is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Features provided by Ovid are advanced mapping, which analyzes users' natural language queries and suggests appropriate terms for searching, and a thesaurus which automatically suggests synonymous or related terms and allows for expanded searching.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
Citations and abstracts in the fields of biomedicine and health, as well as portions of the life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering.

PubMed includes MEDLINE, PubMed Central (PMC), other biomedical and life science journals, and the NCBI Bookshelf. PubMed also provides links to other NCBI molecular biology resources, including nucleotide sequences, protein sequences, 3-D protein structure data, population study data sets, and assemblies of complete genomes in an integrated system.
Note: The link above goes to a specially configured version of PubMed for UC Berkeley users that will display the Get It at UC button for full text article access. To use the free public version, please click here.

To learn how to use PubMed most effectively, see this guide.

Scopus This link opens in a new window
Indexes journals, conference proceedings, trade publications, and book series in the sciences and more.
Contains over 50 million records with more than half the content originating from outside North America. Indexes over 21,000 journals, conference proceedings, trade publications, and book series in the sciences, technology, medicine, arts, and humanities.
SEARCH (USDA NAL) This link opens in a new window
The USDA National Agricultural Library’s search tool that includes results from AGRICOLA (USDA's catalog and articles database), PubAg (USDA’s public access repository), and the NAL Digital Collections (historical documents and images).
Topics include nutrition, food safety, food quality, animal and crop production and protection, natural resources, sustainable agricultural systems, rural development, agricultural economic and policy issues, agricultural statistics, extension education, and soil science.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Indexes leading journals in the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences. Allows cited reference searching. (ISI Web of Knowledge) [1900 - present]
Includes the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present), Science Citation Index Expanded (1900-present), Social Sciences Citation Index (1900-present), Conference Proceedings Citation Index (1990-present), Book Citation Index (2005-present), and Emerging Sources Citation Index (2005-present).

And here's a friendly reminder:

Conditions of Use for Electronic Reources

Other Databases

In addition the Top Research Databases for PMB, at UCB you have access to many more databases that cover a variety of subject areas. The Library's list of Databases can help you find an appropriate database by subject or content type, or feel free to ask your librarian.

Find Journals and Full Text

Use Journal Search to find online or print access to a particular journal.
To find full text when searching in an article database, look for links:
To find full text from a citation, paste the citation into the search box in UC Library Search.

Searching Tips and Lit Review Basics

Searching by topic
Material (from a biology assignment using the Web of Science platform) on how to find articles on a topic. Includes choosing keywords, broadening a search (truncation, etc.), narrowing a search, and more.
Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students
Helpful video from NCSU libraries. It's geared towards grad students but also relevant to anyone doing a thesis, capstone project, or other major research paper.

Borrowing items not available at UC Berkeley

UCB Faculty, Staff, and Students:

Interlibrary Borrowing Service (IBS) Request books, articles, and other materials not available at UC Berkeley.

Non-UCB Borrowers:

See UCB Library's information on interlibrary lending and duplication services.

Recommend a Purchase:

Use this form to recommend purchases (books, etc.) or subscriptions.

Keeping Current

To help you stay current with published research, set up automated alerts by topic, author, citation, or journal using these tools:

Using Alerts
How to keep up with your favorite journals.
Citation, Journal, and Search Alerts in Web of Science, BIOSIS, CAB Abstracts
See tutorials under "Staying up to date"
Citation and Search Alerts in Scopus
Citation and Search Alerts in Google Scholar
Search Alerts in PubMed using MyNCBI
How to keep up with the scientific literature
Article from Science with some good tips

Read journals on your tablet or smartphone

Browzine
Browzine allows you to browse scholarly journals available from the UC Berkeley Library or from open sources on your Android or iOS mobile device.
more...less...
-Access thousands of scholarly journals anywhere you have WiFi access.
-View complete issues of journals including the table of contents.
-Create a personal library of up to 64 favorite journals for easy access on your BrowZine interface.
-Be alerted when a new issue of a journal is published.
-Save articles on your mobile device to read later even when you are offline.
-Download BrowZine articles to Box.com, Mendeley, Zotero, and other services to help keep all of your information together in one place.

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Plant and Microbial Biology: Articles