Agriculture Research Guide   Tags: agriculture, botanical, plant science  

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 that we subscribe to.  The Catalog does not list the articles within the journals. The individual articles can be found in article databases.

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.

CAB Abstracts
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
CAB Reviews provides over 3,000 full-text review articles published since 1972 in the area of agricultural biotechnology, animal production, animal breeding, biological control, crop production, forestry, grasslands, human and animal nutrition, post-harvest, soils, and veterinary science.

AGRICOLA
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.

Public access link to NAL's catalog, Agricola
If you don't want to search Agricola using the EBSCOHost interface, this link is to the publicly-accessible Agricola search.

Biological Abstracts
Coverage from 1926 to the present. Biological Abstracts is a comprehensive reference database covering life sciences journal literature. It covers the following fields: Botany, Microbiology, Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Evolutionary ecology, Kinseology, Neurology, and Toxicology. Over 4,200 journal titles with over 12.1 million records. All records in Biological Abstracts include highly informative abstracts with complete bibliographic details, including: Titles, Authors, Taxanomic Data (Latin name search), Disease Data, Gene Name Data, and Geologic Time Data.

BioOne
BioOne provides a unique aggregation of high-impact bioscience research journals, featuring timely content on a wide-array of today’s most pressing topics, including global warming, stem cell research, and ecological and biodiversity conservation. BioOne Content Quick Facts: Over 150 titles from more than 110 publishers across three collections; 45% of titles are available online exclusively through BioOne • Over 500,000 pages of content, and growing daily.

Biological & Agricultural Index Plus  (on EBSCOhost)
Coverage dates: Indexing 1983+, Abstracting 1994+, “select” Full Text 1994+. Biological & Agricultural Index Plus offers researchers convenient online access to the core literature of biology and agriculture—much of it from peer-reviewed journals—plus full text. Full text citations also link to PDF page images, featuring graphs, charts, diagrams, photos, and illustrations indispensable to science research. Subjects Covered Agricultural Chemicals, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Engineering, Agriculture and Agricultural Research, Animal Sciences, Biochemistry, Biology, Biotechnology, Botany, Cytology, Ecology, Entomology, Environmental Science, Fishery Sciences, Food Science, Forestry, Genetics, Horticulture, Immunology, Limnology, Marine Biology, Microbiology, Nutrition, Paleontology, Physiology, Plant Pathology, Soil Science, Veterinary Medicine, Weed Sciences, Wildlife Management, Zoology.

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)
International Bibliography of Social Sciences, from the British Library of Political and Economic Science of the London School of Economics and Political Science, indexes the information contained in over 2,600 social sciences journals and 6,000 books each year. Coverage includes both core and specialized material from over 100 countries in more than 90 languages. Approximately 70% of the records are in English, and articles in other languages are displayed with both the original language title as well as with an English translation. The comprehensive coverage provided in the database, while based on the core disciplines of anthropology, economics, political science and sociology, also reflects the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of the social sciences.

Plant Management Network Plant Science Database

ScienceDirect
Provides access to full text of over 600 journals to which MSU Libraries have subscriptions, from 1995 to present. Also includes access to abstracts of articles in non-subscribed journals and pre-1995 issues.

Web of Science
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.

WorldCat (OCLC)
WorldCat (World Catalog) is the OCLC Online Union Catalog, containing more than 35 million records describing items owned by MSU Libraries and libraries around the world; each record indicates library holdings. It is produced by the OCLC Online Computer Library Center and describes books, manuscripts, computer data files, maps, computer programs, musical scores, films and slides, newspapers, journals, sound recordings magazines, and videotapes. WorldCat is very helpful in identifying Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension publications by individual titles and authors, especially those prior to 1970.

ASABE Technical Library
Online access to all 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)
ASABE Technical Library Contents - a cursory title list to many of the titles available in this database

Garden, Landscape and Horticulture Index
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.

Groundwater and Soil Contamination Database
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.

Plant Management Network
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.

American Periodical Series (APS) Full-Text
Full-text database of American periodicals published between the 1700's and 1899.

PlantFacts
Horticulture and crop science information from 46 different colleges, universities, and government institutions across the United States and Canada. This searchable site run by the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, The Ohio State University provides access to over 260,000 pages of Extension fact sheets and bulletins from every land-grant university in the U.S. and several government institutions across Canada. Try this resource even for non-plant research queries as their "plant" filter is porous.

AGRIS
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.

FAOSTAT (MSU only)
FAOSTAT is an on-line and multilingual database currently containing over 1 million time-series records covering international statistics in the following areas: Production, Trade, Food Balance Sheets, Food Aid Shipments, Fertilizer and Pesticides, Land Use and Irrigation, Forest Products, Fishery Products, Population, Agricultural Machinery. The service provides extended on-line query and download limits (10,000 records per query) and unlimited access to FTP bulk download files. A copy of this data is also available on CD-ROM in GD/SSHR of the Main Library.

FAO Corporate Document Repository
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.
To view the new publications added to the repository in the last month, see new documents.
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 (FAS) of the USDA
FAS has the primary responsibility for USDA’s international activities—market development, trade agreements and negotiations, and the collection and analysis of statistics and market information. It also administers USDA’s export credit guarantee and food aid programs, and helps increase income and food availability in developing nations by mobilizing expertise for agriculturally led economic growth. FAS also enhances U.S. agriculture’s competitiveness by providing linkages to global resources and international organizations.

Compendex
Worldwide coverage of journals and conference publications in all areas of engineering.

Food Science and Technology Abstracts (FSTA)
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.

MEDLINE (from PubMed)
MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. Retrospective to the 1950s, it contains bibliographic citations with author abstracts (since 1975) from over 5000 international biomedical journals published in the US and 80 other countries. Many of the citations since the 1995 have links to the fulltext of the article.

Directory of open access journals: DOAJ
Links to the Agriculture and Food Sciences journals in the DOAJ.

Turfgrass Information File (TGIF)
TGIF provides access to professional, technical, scientific, and popular materials, both print and electronic, relating to turfgrass science, culture, and the design and management of turfgrass-based facilities, such as golf courses, parks, sports fields, lawns, sod farms, roadsides, institutional grounds, and other managed landscapes, on a worldwide basis. Over 30% of TGIF records directly link to full-text content.

AgBioForum
AgBioForum publishes articles which enhance the on-going dialogue on the economics and management of agricultural biotechnology. The purpose of AgBioForum is to provide unbiased, timely information and new ideas leading to socially responsible and economically efficient decisions in science, public policy and private strategies pertaining to agricultural biotechnology.

Access to Extension and Experiment Station Publications
A compilation of search engines and databases to extension and other agriculture, forestry and horticulture information.