LibGuides: Chemistry: Locate Articles

DOAJ : Directory of Open Access Journals

Aims & Scope

The aim of the DOAJ is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. It covers all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. It includes publications in many world languages as well as in English.

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Definitions

Open Access Journal: We define open access journals as journals that use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. From the BOAI definition [1] of "open access", we support the rights of users to "read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles" as mandatory for a journal to be included in the directory.

Quality Control: The journal must exercise peer-review or editorial quality control to be included.

Research Journal: Journals that report primary results of research or overviews of research results to a scholarly community.

Periodical: A serial appearing, or intending to appear, indefinitely at regular intervals and generally more frequently than annually, each issue of which is numbered or dated consecutively and normally contains separate articles, stories, or other writings.

Selection Criteria Coverage: •Subject: all scientific and scholarly subjects are covered •Types of resource: scientific and scholarly periodicals that publish research or review papers in full text. •Acceptable sources: academic, government, commercial, non-profit private sources are all acceptable. •Level: the target group for included journals should primarily be researchers. •Content: a substantive part of the journal should consist of research papers. All content should be available in full text. •All languages

Access: •All content freely available. •Registration: Free user registration online is acceptable. •Open Access without delay (e.g. no embargo period). Quality: For a journal to be included it should exercise quality control on submitted papers through an editor, editorial board and/or a peer-review system.

"How-To" Video in the CFCC Library

How to Read and Understand a Research Study
Call Number: Wilm DVDs Q 180.55 .E9 U53 2008
Demonstrates how to understand research studies & evaluate the quality of information presented. It outlines the structure of a scientific paper; differentiates among such research method types as observational studies, true experiments, and quasi-experiments; and explains how to evaluate the quality of a study's design. Features interviews with experts, vignettes, and examples and defines key terms, including hypothesis, random assignment, reliability, validity, and p value.

VIEW a CLIP (3-min.) of this 24-minute DVD.

Best Chemistry Databases

Science Direct
Contains a large collection of Social Sciences and Humanities journals and books, highlighting historical context, current developments, theories, applications, trends and more.

ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
Searches 47 ProQuest resources at one time. Contains millions of full-text articles from magazines, journals and newspapers, including peer-reviewed and scholarly works. Get the most out of ProQuest Central by viewing our tutorial.

CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics This link opens in a new window
Property data on over 20,000 chemical compounds and all physical particles. Includes over 380 different property tables and an overview of chemical and laboratory safety and nomenclature rules.

Keep your initial search simple--save limits (such as date ranges, scholarly, English-language only, etc.) until you see the initial results list.

Look for common database tools (suggested subject headings, abstracts, citation help, emailing and save options) on the edges of the page, often in a color bar above the search boxes or in a separate frame on the right or left of your results list.

Examining a Scientific Study - WHY

SCIENTIFIC PAPERS ARE WRITTEN TO :

· report results, usually experimental

· relate these results to previous knowledge in the field

· facilitate communications among scientists

SCIENTIFIC PAPERS ARE READ TO :

· keep readers current with the latest research in field (Articles can be more up-to-date than books)

· model how a similar study might be done

· improve readers’ scientific writing skills (Lab papers are usually organized the same way as scientific journal articles. The more scientific writing is read, the better the reader’s own scientific writing skills become.)

· enable critical thinking (Raw data accompanies conclusions, so readers can decide for themselves.)

· find more useful resources for further research (The reference list can be used to find related sources.)

· develop a skill expected by employers in scientific & technical careers

Journal of Chemical Education

SEARCH - Journal of Chemical Education
See some selected articles below.

HOW - Your Step-by-Step Guide

Reading a Scientific Study

Six-page PDF steps the reader through the common parts of any scientific study with follow-up questions to guide understanding.