Scientific Literature Exercise

							                            Scientific Literature Exercise
                                BIO/GEO 353 2012

NOTE: You must complete this assignment and return it to class by Monday, March 5, in
class. Late turn-ins will be penalized.

Introduction

The scientific literature is very complex and spread over a large number of journals,
books, and even reports that are often difficult to find. It is the purpose of this exercise to
get you used to some of the methods of finding appropriate papers that might help you in
learning about a subject or preparing you to design your own research.

There are a few basic ways that scientific literature can be found, once a particular subject
is identified:
(1) Ask others about the “hot” papers. If you choose the right people you will have a far
     more efficient entry into the literature than a random search.
(2) Once you have a few papers to examine, read them and work from the bibliographies
     cited at the end of the papers. If the papers come from the past couple of years or so
     you will have a sampling of "what matters" in a given field.
(3) Take a look at journals that typically have papers in the field you are researching. See
     the appendix for a list of journals for this exercise.
(4) Scan through research databases for papers in your subject area, and even look for
     particular authors on computer databases.

Stony Brook's Computer Reference Base

Stony Brook has a fairly extensive selection of computer databases. The simplest one to
access is the Web of Science, which can be reached through the library Research
Databases link. (I am assuming that you all know how to get to a web page and to reach
this address. If you don't please see me immediately and I will show you). To start the
process, first go to www.sunysb.edu and choose the Libraries link, choose the Frank
Melville Memorial Library link, and then choose the Databases A-Z option for other
possibilities, which include the Web of Science under Databases. You may be able
eventually get papers by choosing the Ejournals option. Although there are many
databases, organized in alphabetic order, only two other databases will be of interest for
now:
(1) Marine, Oceanographic & Freshwater Resources
(2) Web of Science

Both are accessed just by clicking the mouse on their respective links.

There is an important third option: scholar.google.com This is accessed directly on a web
browser. You write a few key words and hit return. You get a large list, really a
hodgepodge, of references, papers, references to references, etc. Sometimes you get a pdf


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for direct downloading. The real advantage of this database is the simple way you can
connect to access for interlibrary loan. If you have a login for interlibrary loan (ILL) you
can connect automatically.

Otherwise, you will see a journal, volume and page reference, usually.

Getting Papers On Line

Our Stony Brook library has a large range of journals on line, which may allow you to
download a pdf of a published paper for direct reading. Once you get a reference (author,
year, title, journal, volume, and page numbers) you can go to the E-Journals option
mentioned above. Find the journal and see if we have it. You will find that some papers
are in a journal we have and you can access it directly. In other cases, we will have the
journal, but the volume for the particular paper will not be available. An option is to go to
the InterLibrary Loan link, ILL/Document Delivery. You will have to fill out the form to
get the paper and it may take a couple of days to weeks, depending on the reference.

Important hint! If you have an ILL account and if you find a reference through
Scholar.Google, you can link directly to SBU’s ILL request form and the form will be
completely filled out! This usually involves clicking on a “Check Library Holdings” link.
If you ever see “pdf” then click that, as you will likely get the paper directly on line.

The Exercise
(1) Choose a subject and find three papers on that subject. You can use any of the
    methods I mentioned above. Keep in mind that the Marine Biology Web Page has
    reference lists for a number of subjects, as does the text. The MBWEB site is:
    http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/mbweb.html Both are acceptable to use.
(2) Write the references out in full. Here is an example:
Gallagher, J., and P. Sheen. 1920. How we taught Groucho Marx all he knows today.
Journal of Entertainment, v. 2, pp. 23-24.
(3) As best as you can, describe how and why the three papers can be grouped under the
    same subject, i.e., are related to each other in general objectives and approach. Keep
    your discussion to 100-250 words. You MUST look at these papers in the Science
    library (north end of the Galleria of Frank Melville Library; journals are upstairs) or
    read them as pdf files on line. In order to find the journals in paper form, you will
    have to find their Library of Congress Code Numbers with the aid of the computers
    there.
NOTE: Many journals now are online and you may be able to download articles this way
as Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files. To see if we have the journal you want you have to go to
the Libraries web page and select the Electronic Journals link and use instructions as
above. Usually the journals have numbers only for recent years, with the exception of
some, such as Limnology and Oceanography, Science, Ecology, etc.
(4) Choose another subject and use a computer database only to find 5 references on that
    subject. List them in the same way as for the first three and try to have them cover the




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   same subject as best you can. You do not have to look at the papers directly. Write
   down the name of the database(s) that you used.

NOTE! Web pages and books are not appropriate as references.

Problems? You can contact me at levinton@life.bio.sunysb.edu, or you can the course
TA, Patrick Lyons at plyons@life.bio.sunysb.edu

Journals to Examine (others are also acceptable):
American Zoologist
Biological Bulletin
Deep-Sea Research
Ecology
Ecological Applications
Ecology Letters
Evolution
Functional Ecology
Journal of Animal Ecology
Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology
Journal of Marine Research
Journal of Shellfish Research
Limnology and Oceanography
Marine Biology
Marine Ecology - Progress Series
Nature
Science
Trends in Ecology and Evolution




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