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Science and Technology Sources - Handouts: Step by Step with BiomedCentral

Here you can find the handouts and instructions for using many of the library's Science and Technology databases as well as Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology.

Step by Step with BiomedCentral

Where to Go

Search Biomed Central.

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Step by Step with Biomedcentral

Biomedcentral is a gateway to full text, mostly peer reviewed articles in many aspects of the life sciences and allied fields. In addition to primary source biology articles, Biomedcentral's blogs are credible secondary/general sources. This handout helps you explore and take advantage of Biomedcentral step by step.


You can reach Biomedcentral via its own URL: http://www.biomedcentral.com Bookmark this if you want to use this source frequently.

Biomedcentral offers four (4) ways to search/browse.

Big picture of Biomedcentral
Explore Journals in Biomedcentral
Explore subject collections in Biomedcentral
  • You can read the Editors' picks on the front page. Scholarly journal articles are advertised with pictures, while featured blog entries are near the bottom of the page.
  • You can click the Explore Journals link near the top of the page to browse a particular journal. Note: the list of journals is very long.

    This works best when you know what you want a

    Ctrl-F can help find a journal on your topic
  • You can also search by subject. First click the Explore Journals link. Then select the smallish text link, Browse article collections by subject.(It is easy to miss).

Finally, you can search BioMedCentral...

Searching Biomedcentral

Biomedcentral's inconspicuous keyword search box is in the top right corner of the page

A narrow life science topic nearly always contains two ideas.

For example, Tasmanian devil facial tumor disease is Tasmanian devil AND tumor. The AND is not a word, but an operator that selects only the overlap between Tasmanian devil and tumor.

Also think of synonyms for your topic. For example cancer for tumor. 		Biomedcentral Boolean search circles are here

Type your search into the box with the AND and click the little, gray, magnifying glass.


Sample of Biomedcentral results
Biomedcentral icons 		Biomedcentral presents articles in groups of ten (10). Scroll among articles on a page and move between pages with the arrows on the top and bottom of the page.

To see an article's full text click on its, blue title.

Articles appear as full text HTML with images. They also have DOIs. Cite them as scholarly articles from the web. There are no ready made citations, but there is enough material to create your own citation with a cheat sheet.

To print an article, download it as a PDF first. Make sure you have it open in FireFox, Chrome, or Adobe NOT Edge. You can also save your PDF article to your flash drive or upload it to OneDrive or Google Drive.

To start another Biomedcentral search, type it into the searchbox in the top right corner of the page.

To end a Biomedcentral session, close your browser or tab.