For broad help with finding academic articles visit our Finding Academic Articles learning resource.
There are many places you can find academic articles, but the easiest way is to search in library databases. By searching within a database, you can search multiple journals at once. There isn’t one database that has everything, so it’s important to search across multiple databases.
You can search within the databases below for biological science articles. Alternatively, select the Journals tab to browse through a list of key biological science journals.
Below is an example of an advanced search option you’ll find in most databases. It has multiple search boxes with the Boolean operator, AND, listed on the left-hand side. Each concept has been entered into a search box and joined by AND.
Click on the +plus icons to learn about each search technique demonstrated.
This interactive activity shows an image of the Library advanced search bars filled in with an example search as follows:
"eukaryotic cells"
AND eukarya OR eukaryote
AND virus*
There are 3 selectable icons that explain each of the search techniques used in this advanced search.
Use Quotation marks to search for words in an exact order. This is called phrase searching.
Using the OR word between terms broadens a search to show results that contain any of the terms. Using AND narrows the search to show results that contain all of the terms.
Add an asterisk to the end of a keyword to find variant word endings. This is called truncation. This example of virus* will find virus and viruses.