LibGuides: Agriculture Research Guide: Article Research

Article Research at MSUL

Articles contain the most current information published in a field of study.

Most professors and researchers prefer articles that are "scholarly" in nature. Characteristics of scholarly journals are that they have the following qualities:

The articles contain original research (such as scientific experiments, surveys and research studies)
A list of references or sources is provided at the end of each article
An editorial board, composed of experts in the field, reviews articles to decide whether they should be accepted; this is also known as "refereed," "peer-reviewed," "professional," or "academic".
Uses a specialized vocabulary for that field.
Contain few if any advertisements. If included, they are highly specialized and specific to scholarly discipline (i.e. specific laboratory equipment, medical tools and drugs).
If you are uncertain about the scholarly nature of a journal, you all look up the title or ISSN in the periodical database Ulrichs Periodical Directory (UlrichsWeb). This database will tell you about the journal including the nature, it's audience, and in which databases it is indexed and abstracted.

The Library Catalog contains the TITLES to all of the print and electronic format journals to which we have access. The Catalog does not list the articles within the journals. The individual articles can be found in the many article databases to which we subscribe.

Citation searching:

If you have a citation to an article, the easiest way to locate the article is to look up the title of the journal in the catalog. Identify whether we own the journal and the format, print or electronic. If in electronic format, do we have that year/volume? If yes, you can click on the link provided to go directly to the online articles and find the one you need. If it is not online, do we have it in print? If so, identify the call number and go to the stacks to find the proper volume and issue. If we do not own the journal or issue, you can request the article through Interlibrary Services.

Article Research - General Research

CAB Abstracts This link opens in a new window
1910-
CAB covers the subject of agriculture in the broadest sense. It includes: agronomy, biotechnology, crop protection, dairy science, economics, environmental degradation and remediation, forestry, genetics, herbicides, irrigation, leisure, recreation and tourism, microbiology, nutrition, parasitology, rural development, veterinary medicine and much more. Journals, monographs, conferences, books, annual reports and other sources from more than one country are scanned regularly for inclusion in the database.
CAB Reviews This link opens in a new window
CAB Reviews is a reviews journal that complements the subject coverage of CAB Direct [CAB Abstracts], by focusing on agriculture, animal science, applied plant sciences, global health, veterinary medicine, nutrition and food science, and natural resources and environmental sciences. The articles provide scientists, academics and students working in these fields with analyses of emerging trends and overviews of important topics. It is an authoritative resource to help them keep abreast of the latest developments and place their research efforts into context. Coverage is 1972-current.
Biological & Agricultural Index Plus This link opens in a new window
1983-
Provides information from groundwater pollution to genetic engineering and covers the entire range of sciences related to biology and agriculture. Indexes 226 key periodicals in the life sciences and agriculture. Includes current book reviews.
BioOne Complete This link opens in a new window
BioOne launched its original aggregation, BioOne.1, with 40 titles in 2001. In January 2007 BioOne added BioOne.2, a complementary collection of 40 new titles. Now at maturity, BioOne Complete about 200 high-impact publications. BioOne.1 provides the scholarly community with a must-have collection of critical, high-quality titles across the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
1995-
ScienceDirect (from Elsevier) provides access to the full text of over 2,000 journals, from 1995 to present (with extended coverage for some titles). It also contains electronic books. Coverage includes strong content in the physical sciences. Personalization options for table of contents alerts, saving searches, etc., are available.
SpringerLink This link opens in a new window
SpringerLink is the platform for European based publisher Springer. It provides online access to reference works and other e-books, in addition to their journals in the scientific, technical, and medical fields. PLEASE NOTE MSU LIBRARIES HAS NOT PURCHASED ALL CONTENT ON THIS PLATFORM.
AGRICOLA This link opens in a new window
1970-
Covers every major agricultural subject, including agricultural engineering and marketing, animal breeding, entomology, environmental pollution, farm management, foods and feeds, pesticides, rural sociology, veterinary medicine, and water resources. Citations consist of journal articles, book chapters, monographs, conference proceedings, serials, technical reports, and other materials on a range of agricultural topics.
Gale OneFile: Agriculture This link opens in a new window
With broad coverage of agriculture and its related fields, this collection provides a comprehensive view of a growing body of knowledge. Researchers will have access to current and authoritative periodical content that spans the industry--from practical aspects of farming to cutting-edge scientific research in horticulture. With strong emphasis on titles covered in the Agricola database, this collection of more than 600 journal titles is focused on agriculture-related fields. In addition, more than 30 Delmar titles provide in-depth coverage on a variety of agriculture-related topics.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Includes the Institute for Scientific Information Citation Indexes - Arts and Humanities, Social Science, and Science. It indexes science, social sciences, and arts and humanities information from nearly 9,300 of the most prestigious, high impact research journals in the world.
Groundwater and Soil Contamination Database This link opens in a new window
This database published by the American Geological Institute includes over 60,000 references to documents published since 1975. Over 1,000 new references will be added in each quarterly update. Coverage is worldwide, with emphasis on the United States. Journal articles, books, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations are included. Also covered are all relevant reports of the U.S. Geological Survey, and reports of the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, Health and Human Services, and the Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Grow: Plant Health Exchange This link opens in a new window
The Plant Management Network is a unique cooperative resource for the applied plant sciences. Designed to provide plant science practitioners fast electronic access to proven solutions, the Plant Management Network offers an extensive searchable database comprised of thousands of web-based resource pages from the network's partner universities, companies, and associations. In addition, the network's three peer-reviewed citable journals, Applied Turfgrass Science, Crop Management, Forage and Grazinglands, and Plant Health Progress, provide credible current information in areas important to practitioners, policy makers, and the public.

PubAg
PubAg is a portal to USDA-authored and other highly relevant agricultural research. At launch, it delivers over 42,709 full-text journal articles by USDA staff and includes nearly 1,346,186 citations. The Library will add about 20,000 citations each month. The new release also previews its directions for intended functionality and will serve as the foundation for further enhancements. Note that there is both citation-only and full-text content. Many of the citation-only items can be found at the MSU Libraries in subscribed content.
Cab Direct
Cab Direct is the publicly searchable interface for CAB Abstracts and Global Health. MSU users can find much of the content in our subscription databases. This interface provides the 'RIS' file download for citation management programs like Mendeley and Zotero.

International Agriculture

For agricultural topics outside of the United States, try these resources after searching CAB Abstracts.

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences This link opens in a new window
Anthropology is a core discipline covered by this database. Journal and book coverage draws significantly on the collection of the Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Over 50 percent of journals indexed are published outside the US or the UK; 25 percent of references are in languages other than English. Coverage dates back to 1951.
FAO Corporate Document Repository This link opens in a new window
The FAO Corporate Document Repository houses FAO documents and publications, as well as selected non-FAO publications, in electronic format. It enables users to easily access the accumulated knowledge and information produced by FAO directly on the Internet. The advanced search provides the user with the means to carry out a specific search, by querying a particular field or combination of fields. There are three distinct advanced searches, one for meeting documents one for publications, such as books and journals, and one for articles.

Foreign Agriculture Service (USDA)
International agricultural market, production and trade data and reports. See also the Global Agricultural Trade System. GATS includes international agricultural, fish, forest and textile products trade statistics dating from the inception of the Harmonized coding system in 1989 to present.

AGRIS (Free FAO version) This link opens in a new window
Covers all aspects of agriculture, including forestry, animal husbandry, the aquatic sciences and fisheries, and human nutrition. The database is produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) in cooperation with participating countries and international organizations. Information on using AGRIS to locate FAO reports is available.

Specialty Databases

ASABE Technical Library This link opens in a new window
Online access to all American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Technical Library (ASABE) journals, standards, meeting and conference papers, textbooks, and monographs beginning with 2001. ASABE's journals are refereed publications: Applied Engineering in Agriculture (vol.13/1997); Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health (vol.1/1995) ; Transactions of the ASABE (vol.40/1997); Biological Engineering (vol.1/2008)
Food Science and Technology Abstracts (FSTA) This link opens in a new window
1969-
FSTA covers all areas of food science, food technology, and human nutrition, including basic food science, biotechnology, toxicology, packaging, and engineering. Some 1800 publications in over 40 languages are scanned regularly, including journals, reviews, standards, legislation, patents, books, theses, and conference proceedings.

Floriculture InfoSearch
Floriculture InfoSearch is a powerful, but focused search engine designed to bring you floriculture information from the scientific literature, trade and association magazines/websites, NC State University, and the American Floral Endowment Floriculture Archive (repository of literature dating back to the 1800s). Use this search engine for all of your floriculture questions

Compendex This link opens in a new window
Compendex is one of the most comprehensive engineering literature databases available to engineers with 14 million records across 190 engineering disciplines. Available on Engineering Village, users get results that are consistently accurate. Relevant. Up-to-date. And easy to find. Compendex indexes 1,031 journals that contain articles-in-press. Compendex covers subjects in every engineering discipline including: Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Mining Engineering.
Garden, Landscape and Horticulture Index This link opens in a new window
The Garden, Landscape and Horticulture Index is a popular and scholarly index to over 300 journals on gardening, horticulture, landscape design, botany, ecology, plant conservation, garden management, and horticultural therapy.
American Periodicals Series This link opens in a new window
"This database contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals."
Michigan Agriculture and Rural Life This link opens in a new window
A searchable database of over 1,900 references to books, pamphlets, serial publications, and theses and dissertations related to Michigan agriculture and rural life and published by state and local entities prior to 1946. Excludes references to Federal publications, Michigan legislative documents, compilations of laws, maps, county histories, and manuscripts and archival materials. Part of the more broadly-scoped database, AGBib: Agriculture and Rural Life in the United States, which contains references from multiple states.

Agriculture Librarian

Suzanne Teghtmeyer

she/hers

Email Me

Contact:

Main Library
366 W. Circle Dr.
East Lansing, MI 48824
teghtmey@msu.edu

Orcid ID

Subjects: Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Agriculture

DOIs

Using the DOI to locate an article

The new edition of the APA style manual endorses the use of DOIs to help locate material. Note the DOI at the end of the article citation:

Lerner, R. M., von Eye, A., Lerner, J. V., & Lewin-Bizan, S. (2009). Exploring the foundations and functions of adolescent thriving within the 4-H study of positive youth development: A view of the issues. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(5), 567-570. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2009.07.002

DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. It is a system that provides a persistent URL (web address) for documents on the Internet. Publishers must register a DOI for articles. The system is pretty new, so some publishers will use it and others may not.

There are several ways to locate an article using the DOI:

Type the address into your browser, starting with http://dx.doi.org, as in http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2009.07.002
Go to the DOI system link resolver page and use their lookup service [http://dx.doi.org/]
Google the entire DOI phrase "doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2009.07.002"

You will then be taken to the webpage for the article on the publisher's website.

Important! The full-text of the article will only be available if the publisher recognizes that you are an MSU student and if we have a subscription to the journal.

To be recognized as an MSU student, you will need to have authenticated through the proxy server by logging on to any MSU Libraries subscription resource. You can also add the phrase "http://ezproxy.msu.edu:2047/login?url=" to the beginning of the DOI link (e.g. http://ezproxy.msu.edu:2047/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2009.07.002) to force the proxy server login page. However, if MSU does not have a subscription to the journal the full-text will not be available. Use the library catalog to check to see if we subscribe to a particular journal.

MSU Libraries

Research Guides

Agriculture Research Guide: Article Research