CHEM 295: Forensic Chemistry
Forensic Chemistry Journals
While there are many good books dealing with forensic chemistry,
what you really need to bolster your research papers are journal articles.
Articles represent the most current research results available. Understanding
how journal literature works will make this searching much easier.
Follow the steps in the table below from left to right to find
professional journal literature.
Browse these journals to see the kinds of articles published in an
average issue (not all will be precisely on forensic chemistry). Some
good journals to start with are:
Forensic
Science International
Journal
of chromatography. B, Analytical technologies in the biomedical and
life sciences
Journal
of Clinical Forensic Medicine
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Choosing a Database
You need to search chemistry databases to find journal citations. (More
on databases (LOBO).) The databases that you want to use for this class
are:
1) SciFinder Scholar
The pre-eminent chemistry database. Includes some fulltext. You can
only use this on campus computers. more
on SciFinder - PLEASE READ!!
2) Science
Citation Index
Chemistry + other sciences. Allows article and author searches to
see who else has cited that article or author. Very limited fulltext.
3) PubMed
Very robust medical database. Where applications of chemistry to forensics
might be found. Many articles have links to fulltext.
These databases, plus more, are all found within the library's database pages (the Chemistry subject area is a good page to be familiar with).
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Searching Databases
Databases ARE NOT search engines (they are much more powerful!!).
Results are NOT ranked by relevancy, so you need to create accurate
and meaningful sets of results. Boolean searching allows you to do
this. Link your main concepts with AND. Then, using limits, refine
your search. I will show you more about this art when I visit your
class.
Ex. In SciFinder I do a search on the terms: mass spectrometry
and forensic. This brings back 281 citations, too many to look
through. I then limit these to just review articles (summary
articles for a field of research) which brings me down to 48. I can
arrange these by publication, author, etc.
More
on Boolean searching (LOBO).
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Understanding Citations
A citation gives you an abstract of the article, the author, the
article title, and the year, volume, page, and name of the journal
in which the article was published. It does NOT include fulltext.
Databases are collections of citations, not articles.
Example:
Ikegaya, H. et al. "Detection of the calcium antagonist nicardipine
and its metabolites by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry".
Forensic Science International. 130.1
(5 November 2002). pp. 25-28.
Here, 130 is the volume, 1 is the issue and the article is on pages
25-28. There are many different styles for writing citations, but
in all of them, the volume number should appear after the title.
Sometimes the fulltext online version of the article is linked from
the citation. This is great, you can go directly to the article and
print it out. Use the 
button if you see it. Click on this to see if there we subscribe to
an online copy of the journnal.
There will not always be an online version of the journal.
We may still have the journal. The next section explains how to get
the print copies of a journal.
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Finding print copies of Journals
Don't ignore articles that are not fulltext online in your database!!
Some may have electronic access through a different source and others
can be found in print within the library. Here is what to do:
Given a citation with no link to fulltext (this citation is from
SciFinder Scholar):
Okeke, C. C.; Wynn, J. E.; Patrick, K. S. Simultaneous
analysis of cocaine, benzoylecgonine, methylecgonine, and ecgonine
in plasma using an exchange resin and gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy.
Chromatographia (1994), 38(1-2), 52-6.
Take the journal title: Chromatographia
Go to the NCSU Library catalog.
Paste the title into the catalog search box. Make sure Journal
Title is selected. From the title list that results, select
the best match. Click on this record. Here's what you should see:
1) A box near the bottom called Electronic Access. If there
is a link provided, you can get to the fulltext for this journal for
the years mentioned. In this case, there is no electronic access.
There may be for other journals.
2) At the bottom is a call number: QD271 .C54. This number
allows you to find all of the issues of the journal here in the library.
QD is the number for all chemistry journals and books and all
QD materials are on the 6th floor. Call
number map
More
information about locating print copies of journals (LOBO).
One final note: if you can't find a journal title in the catalog
and it isn't available online, contact me before
abandoning your search.
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Citing Sources
You must cite your sources completely. Not doing so is plagiarism
and is severely unished in academia.
Pick a citation style (there are many: APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) and
stick with it. Style guides are available at the D.H. Hill reference
desk. Use the same style throughout a document.
More information on citing sources
(LOBO).
A typical citation in your bibliography might look like this:
Ikegaya, H. et al. "Detection of the calcium antagonist nicardipine
and its metabolites by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry".
Forensic Science International. 130.1 (5 November 2002). pp.
25-28.
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