Research Guides: Bio 4072/5572: Regenerative and Stem Cell Biology: Finding Primary Literature

Examples of Primary Sources & Determining Source Reliability

Examples of Primary Sources

Journal articles describing research in-depth (hypothesis, literature review, methodology, results, discussion)
Conference Papers
Technical Reports
Dissertations
Interviews with specialists
Lab notebooks

Determining Source Reliability

Consider these questions when evaluating a source for reliability:

Authorship: was the source created by an expert in the field?
Subject Expertise: does the source cite other reliable and appropriate research?
Publisher: where was the source published, and is the source reputable? Was the paper peer-reviewed?
Currency: how up-to-date is the information being provided by the source, and how old is the information that the source is citing?

Library Databases

PubMed (1946 - )
Covers medical and biomedical sciences. Best place to start searching.
Scopus
Covers medical and biomedical sciences, as well as health science, life science, physical science, social science, and humanities. Good as a back-up to PubMed.
Web of Science (1900 - )
Interdisciplinary like Scopus, but covers older literature.

Activity

In order to practice searching for primary literature, choose one of the library resources listed above and try to find a primary source on a topic related to this course. Examples of topics include: single-cell RNA sequencing methods; the role of stem cells in limb regeneration.

It's okay if you don't find anything! Searching for any research literature is always a process. Be prepared to share what resource you searched, if you were able to find a useful primary source, and if you found anything interesting or challenging about searching the resource.