For this assignment, each of you is looking for at least five scientific journal articles on an evolution, ecology, or animal structure/function topic.
This guide will walk you through how to find, and use, Library databases that will help with your assignment. Specifically, this guide will show you how to:
If you get stuck, need help, or have questions, please use the Chat Box on the left.
National Park Service. Muir Woods Monument.
When beginning your research, it sometimes helps to see lists of potential topics and find out some background information on ones that interest you.
Background sources, also called reference sources, include things like encyclopedias and dictionaries that provide us with basic facts, overviews, and terminology. Even though these are NOT the kinds of sources you will cite for this assignment, these can help you determine which of your three potential topics is truly the most interesting to you, and they can teach you some of the terminology you may need when looking for scientific journal articles on your topic.
A great database to help you find scientific topic ideas and background sources is called Science (Gale in Context). This database provides background research on key scientific concepts, and also includes a "Browse Topics" feature that can help you select a research topic.
The Libraries are testing a new natural-language search tool and we need your help to make the service better.
The OneSearch Research Assistant beta is a tool powered by Generative Artificial Intelligence (specifically, Large Language Models or LLM). It allows you explore library content by asking questions in natural language. The Research Assistant uses content found in OneSearch to identify five documents that can help answer your question. It then extracts the most relevant information from the description/abstracts of each source to write the answer. Below the answer, you'll see the sources used to generate it along with in-line citations that let you clearly see which source was used to generate each part in the answer. Use these sources to delve deeper into the topic, to restate your question, or to search in OneSearch for more sources.
You can access the Research Assistant beta in several ways:
To make the most of the Research Assistant beta, it's essential to ask clear and detailed questions about academic or scientific topics. Be as specific as possible and – pretend you're on Jeopardy! – phrase your query in the form of a question.
Example queries can be found on the starting screen and include research questions such as "How can we improve diversity in clinical trials?" and "What are the most effective individual actions to reduce carbon emissions?"
The Research Assistant beta is not a chat bot. It does not yet support follow-up questions. Each question stands by itself. For example, if you ask "what is the most important work of Simone de Beauvoir", you cannot follow up by asking "and what is the content of that work" and expect the system to understand what you mean. At this time, you will have to include all relevant information in each question, e.g. "what is the content of Beauvoir's The Second Sex"?
The Research Assistant beta cannot yet refine your results by facets such as "peer-reviewed articles" or "articles published in the last 5 years."
The Research Assistant beta bases its answers for the most part on online articles, book chapters, and theses. The Research Assistant Large Language Model does not include content from print books, manuscript collections, or other locally-held materials. Some publishers have opted out of including their information in this beta phase.
Your question is converted into a query that the search engine understands with the help of a Large Language Model (currently GPT 3.5). The search engine then identifies the most relevant documents in the index. It ranks them according to how well they can answer the question and, again a with the help of the Large Language Model, creates an answer from the top 5 sources.
Due to the nature of Large Language Models, answers to the same question are not always the same. There may be more than one possible answer and different resources that are relevant. If you are not satisfied with your answers, use the "Try again" button. Or try one of the suggested related research questions.
Your personal data is not stored.
Anonymized data, including our institution name and questions asked, are kept for statistical analysis.
Answer results are not stored from session to session. However, your questions and feedback are used to train the Research Assistant to better respond to research queries.
Read more about the vendor's privacy policies.
Great! Use the thumbs up / thumbs down icons in your results to give us your comments, questions, and suggestions for improvement. We want your honest opinion on the usefulness of this new AI tool.
You are also welcome to send feedback directly to lapc-library@laccd.edu with the subject line "OneSearch Research Assistant."
Because scholarly articles are written by experts for other experts in their field they can be complex and difficult to read. The most effective way of reading a scholarly article is to NOT read the article from beginning to end as you would a magazine or news article. Instead, it is best to jump around between different sections and to put more focus on some sections than others.
Here is one way you can approach reading a scholarly article strategically:
Remember: Don't read the article from start to finish the first time!
*Note: Unless you want to replicate the experiment you don't need to understand every detail in the Methods section. Focus on identifying basic methods used in the study.
An article is considered original research if...
Original research articles that include data from other sources such as government websites or journal articles to support their hypothesis are considered secondary sources. The format of the information is the same as an original research paper that is a primary source (abstract, introduction, background, method, etc.). However, rather than doing an experiment or conducting interviews, the researcher is using information from valid primary sources to support their hypotheses. New ideas are then supported by existing data. Take a look at the sample abstract on the next page.
The image below shows an example of a journal article, with the different sections highlighted. Clicking on the image will open in a new interactive window.
Disclaimer: This image is visually interactive in nature. If you have a visual impairment documented with Pierce Special Services and feel that you cannot reasonably view the interactive image, please contact the instructor to request an alternate format.
The image embedded on this page is a sample display of the layout of an original or primary research article. As discussed above in the Scholarly Articles & Peer Review section, the key elements of the article have been highlighted for context:
This is not an exhaustive list, just a preview of some of the main characteristics that indicate an article considered primary research. For a full description of the image, you can read the text description of the research article image.
If you would like to learn more about original research go to the Library's Research Guides: Scholarly Journals
Watch this 2-minute video for a breakdown of the elements necessary to determine if an article is an original research.
Pierce gives you access to many different databases (you can view the full list here) because each database includes unique content.
The 6 minute video below shows you how we can look for additional scientific journal articles using a database called Science Direct.
Looking for even more tools you can use to find scientific journal articles on your topics? Try searching in these additional databases:
A multidisciplinary, full-text database of journals published by John Wiley & Sons.
Note:Full-text access for which the Library has a subscription is identified by an open lock.
Nearly 14,000 indexed titles, including more than 10,000 peer-reviewed journals and more than 6,500 in full-text.