To find the full text of articles:
Note: You cannot use the catalog to find individual articles within a journal. For this you must search in the journal itself or use an article database.
Below are a number of databases that are used in biomedical laboratory diagnostics. Use these to search for journal articles related to your topic. If you need assistance with searching and using these resources please contact Andrea Kepsel, Biomedical Laboratory Diagnostics Librarian, at akepsel@msu.edu.
Note: Beginning June 1, 2021, users of NCBI services will need to login with their MSU Net ID instead of a NCBI-generated account. The NLM has more information about this change and how to link your existing NCBI account with your MSU Net ID. A Microsoft Word document containing step by step instructions is avaialble for download.
How do I know which database to search? This chart can help identify the best database depending on your topic and what you hope to find.
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Database
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Subject Coverage
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Format coverage
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Years covered online--MSU
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| CAB Abstracts | This British database covers agriculture, veterinary science, animal science, and some basic biological journals (to a lesser extent). Biology coverage not as good as Web of Science or BA, but it does cover proceedings literature not covered in either of those. | journals, book chapters, reports, proceedings | 1910-present |
| PubMed (Medline) |
This database from the National Library of Medicine covers not only clinical medicine but also many areas of biology including biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, physiology, microbiology, immunology, etc, and is the most heavily used database in the biomedical sciences. Contains many additional links to databases from the National Center for Biotechnology Information. |
journals only | 1966-present |
| Biological Abstracts (BA) | Covers all areas of biological sciences including areas not covered by PubMed/Medline such as ecology, plant sciences, zoology, or wildlife literature. Not updated as frequently as Medline and coverage of some biomedical journals not as good as Medline. | journals only | 1926-present |
| Web of Science | Covers all areas of science and therefore spans the literature from ecology to plant science to genetics to biochemistry to chemistry to medicine. Very good one-stop source for biologists whose work spans several of these areas. Contains citation counts for articles. | journals only | 1900-present |
| Scopus | Similar to Web of Science, Scopus is an interdisciplinary database covering all of the sciences. Whereas Web of Science is selective in choosing the "best journals", Scopus is more comprehensive and is the largest database. It does not go back as far in time as Web of Science. Also contains citation counts for articles back to 1996. | journals, some conference proceedings | coverage for journals varies, citation information only back to 1996 |
Google Scholar can be a useful tool but it is important to know some of the main differences between it and databases when searching the literature. Some key differences are: what is included in each and how content is selected, how data is entered, and what is search.
Google Scholar can be set up so that it recognizes you as an MSU user and will give you access to full-text articles where possible.
1) Go to Google Scholar; login to your account if you have one.
2) Access settings by expanding the menu at the top left of the page, then clicking on the gear icon.
3) Select Library Links from the menu on the left.
4) Search for Michigan State University. From the results list put a check in the box by Michigan State University - MSU Access. Click Save.
5) When you do a search on Google Scholar a MSU Access link will appear to the right of the articles that the full text is available for. Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can download the PDF. You may be prompted to log in with your Net ID and password.
Be aware that a MSU Access link will not appear for all articles that the full text is available for. You may need to locate them by searching for the journal in the A-Z Electronic Journal List.
