What primary literature is and why you should use it

Good laboratory write-ups have in their Introductions and Discussions (and sometimes their Materials and Methods) citations from the primary scientific literature. These articles present new data and their experimenters' personal views on what their results meant. Your use of such literature can provide compelling support for hypotheses you might make and support for statements of fact that you might wish to establish. Good referencing of the primary literature is also useful in convincing the reader that your particular experiment has not been previously completed, and that your experiment would truly offer data useful for addressing an important hypothesis. If nothing else, proper use of primary literature indicates to your eventual reader (and grader!) that you know of, and understand, the relevant experimentation that has been published on a topic.

In the broad scheme of knowledge, primary literature is the most reliable because it has been peer-reviewed, and thus is least likely to suffer from egregious errors of fact, shady statistical procedures, and outrageously vile opinions. Here is a general ranking of sources, starting with the most desirable (truly undesirable sources are in grey):

primary articles in journals/periodicals (e.g., Evolution, Cell)
primary articles in books
review articles in journals/periodicals
book chapters
textbooks
articles in popular-press periodicals (e.g., Natural History, Scientific American)
articles in magazines (e.g., Vogue)
newspaper articles
laboratory manuals
product manuals
brochures
lecture notes
personal communications (e-mail, telephone, etc.) with scientists
web sites, rumors, hearsay, voices in your head
outright fabrications

Finding journal articles using "database" searches

The easiest way to find primary literature articles is to search for them within electronic databases of biology-related periodicals (list will open in a new window). Looking in these databases will search for articles in hundreds of different journals (periodicals). If you want to restrict your search to just one of these databases, choose Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, which has the best coverage for biology. (Sometimes, you might need to conduct your search in ALL of these databases before you successfully find the perfect article for your write-up.)

Finding journal articles by searching within a specific journal

Almost all periodicals have electronic versions (list will open in a new window), and you can connect to the publisher's site directly to run a search. Most journals offer searches of articles from 1997 to present day, although the richer journals are scanning older articles for inclusion.

Finding articles using "Literature cited" contents

If you already have one great paper on a topic, it is likely that many of the articles that are cited within it are also pretty darn relevant: you should hunt them down and read them if their titles sound appropriate.

Using the secret weapon of literature searching: Web of Science

Using the "great paper" that you already possess, you can find other, more recent articles on similar topics by searching for papers that list your paper in their Literature cited sections. Similarly, if you know of a "famous" paper on the topic but do not have an actual copy of the famous paper (e.g., it's only available in a library in Bosnia), you can determine which papers have cited it, and hope that some of these citing articles are more readily available. To run a search like this, you identify the target paper in Web of Science (opens in a new window), and then invoke the "which articles have cited this paper" function. Refer to the extremely helpful tutorial on conducting a "cited reference lookup" for more information.

Obtaining articles once you have found a citation

To see whether Swarthmore owns a particular journal, perform a search of Swarthmore College's journal holdings (in "Tripod").

If the journal is owned by Swarthmore College, it can reside as a print version (in the basement of Cornell), an electronic version (linked to above search), or both.

If the journal resides at Bryn Mawr or Haverford, you may request it by filling out the Tri-college Periodical Request Form.

If the article is not present within the Tri-College system, you may request it article via Inter-library Loan (this request can sometimes be partially automated by clicking on the "More" image next to articles in your listing of search results).

Searching for dissertations

There are hundreds of thousands of unpublished thesis chapters out there, and sometimes it is good to Interlibrary loan the dissertation.

Note to the lazy

If you cite an article in your write-up, the reader will assume that you have read the entire article, not just the abstract. If you were unable to locate the full article, do not use it as a reference. In many courses, professors appreciate having copies of the literature you are citing--just attach the articles you used with a paper clip.

Note to the extraordinarily lazy

With all of the above searches, you are likely to accumulate a large number of articles that are in an electronic format. Resist the temptation to use the "copy/paste" features of your computer to transfer "nice phrases" to your write-up. Your paper must consist of writing that is 100% in your own words. Plagiarizing phrases (even 2-3 words long) violates Swarthmore College's Academic Honesty policies, of course, but it also undermines your ability to learn via writing. Read the following PDF (1 page) for more information about plagiarism, and how and why to avoid it.

Need help?

If you want to perform more sophisticated database searches, or have questions about library holdings, please contact your professor, your laboratory instructor, or Meg Spencer (610-328-7685, mspence1@swarthmore.edu), the Science Librarian at Cornell.

 

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