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Nutrition: Finding Journal Articles

If a topic is too current or too specific to be covered by a handbook, encyclopedia, or book, it may be discussed in journal articles, research reports, or conference papers. Access to this literature has traditionally been through indexing and abstracting services. There is no universal index that covers all the published information in nutrition, so at times you may have to consult several sources.

Electronic Databases

Electronic databases provide comprehensive searching of indexes or articles via the computer. Searching these databases is faster and often more complete since subject terms can be combined to locate a topic.

To search these databases, use the Information System workstations located in the D. H. Hill Library or the branch libraries. Many of these databases can be searched from off campus via the NCSU Libraries Proxy Server. You will need a Unity account to login. Unity computing accounts (or Eos accounts for Engineering students) are automatically generated for all students, faculty and staff at NC State. If you do not know what your Unity login is, go to the NCSU Office of Infomation Technology's Computing Accounts, IDs & Passwords services page.

The databases that index articles about nutrition are listed below. Use one or more of the databases to search for references to journal articles. These articles may include a summary or abstract of the article, but they do not usually have the full text of the article. To read the journal articles you have identified, use the NCSU Library Catalog to find out if the NCSU Libraries has the journal.

Agriculture and Life Sciences databases

To search one of these databases, go to the NCSU Libraries Database Finder. Then select a subject-- Example: Food Science.

• AGRICOLA
  

  Agriculture and related literature indexed by the National Agricultural Library (NAL). Indexes journals, books, theses, patents, software, audiovisual materials, technical reports, and agricultural experiment station reports held by the NAL.

  • AGRICOLA via WebSPIRS(NCSU only).
    Coverage: 1970-present. Updated quarterly.
  • AGRICOLA via Community of Science (http://agricola.cos.com/). (NCSU only). Coverage: 1979-present. Updated monthly.
  • AGRICOLA via National Agricultural Library (http://www.nalusda.gov/ag98/). Poor interface. Coverage: 1970-present. Updated daily.

  Use the Journals Indexed in AGRICOLA (JIA) database (http://www.nal.usda.gov/indexing/jia.html) to find the full title for the journal abbreviation found in AGRICOLA.

  Note: you must include punctuation marks in your search. For example, to find out if J. food sci. is indexed in AGRICOLA, search for J. food sci. (not J food sci) in Abbreviated Title.

• Biological Abstracts
  Provides comprehensive indexing of worldwide journal literature in the life sciences. Coverage: 1980- present. Updated quarterly.
• CAB Abstracts
  Worldwide index to agriculture, forestry, and allied disciplines, including animal and human nutrition. From the Centre for Agriculture & Biosciences International. Coverage: 1972- present. Updated quarterly.
• Cambridge Scientific Abstracts: select Biological Sciences subfiles, including Chemoreception Abstracts, and Health and Safety Science Abstracts. Also select:
  • Biotechnology and Bioengineering Abstracts
    Includes "research, applications, regulatory developments and new patents across all areas of biotechnology and bioengineering." Coverage: 1982- present. Updated monthly.
  • Microbiology Abstracts
    Microbiology Abstracts provides comprehensive coverage of research in microbiology--including food microbiology--and related fields. Includes Microbiology Abstracts Section A: Industrial & Applied Microbiology; Microbiology Abstracts Section B: Bacteriology; and Microbiology Abstracts Section C: Algology, Mycology, and Protozoology. Coverage: 1981- present. Updated: monthly.
  • Safety Science and Risk Abstracts
    Provides "comprehensive...information across the fields of public health, safety, and industrial hygiene." Coverage: 1981- present. Updated monthly.
• Food Science and Technology Abstracts
  FSTA delivers comprehensive coverage of the food sciences, food products, and food processing, including the relevant basic sciences: biotechnology, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, microbiology, engineering, and toxicology, as well as economics and legislation. Processes covered in FSTA include the following: manufacturing, quality control automation, packaging, and more. FSTA indexes 1,600 scientific journals on food science and food technology published internationally, as well as, information from books, proceedings, reports, reviews, pamphlets, patents, standards, theses, and legislation. Coverage: 1969- . Updated quarterly.
• SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts and MEDLINE)
  Chemical Abstracts is the most comprehensive index for chemical research. It covers more than 10,000 journals, as well as books, conference proceedings, and patents. You may search Chemical Abstracts by general subject, chemical substance name, molecular formula, ring system structure, author, or patent number. Coverage: 1947-present. Updated daily to weekly. (Note: MEDLINE coverage is 1958-present. Updated weekly.)

  Digital access to the Chemical Abstracts Database is available to NCSU Library users via the Web. Access to this database is restricted to NC State University IP addresses and is currently available for use on the public workstations located near the reference desk at D. H. Hill Library.

  Client Distribution Page (Instructions for downloading the software).

  SciFinder Scholar search tips and other resources

Other databases

• Biological Abstracts/RRM
  Biological abstracts/RRM (reports, reviews, meetings) contains bibliographic references to meeting proceedings, books and chapters, review articles, and U.S. patents. Coverage: 1989- present. Updated quarterly.
• Conference Papers Index (available through Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)
  Conference Papers Index "provides citations to papers and poster sessions presented at major scientific meetings around the world. Subject emphasis since 1995 has been in the life sciences, environmental sciences and the aquatic sciences, while older material also covers physics, engineering and materials science." Coverage: 1982- present. Updated bimonthly.
• Dissertation Abstracts
  Indexing and abstracting for doctoral dissertations from participating colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, and selected international institutions. Dissertation Abstracts also contains citations, with abstracts (since 1988), to masters' theses. Coverage: 1861- present. Updated quarterly.
• Ingenta (previously known as UnCover) and Reveal research alert service
  A multidisciplinary table of contents database, updated nightly, indexing articles in over 17,000 journals. Coverage: Fall 1988- present.

  Reveal is an automated alerting service that delivers the table of contents of periodicals of interest directly to your e-mail box. The Reveal service also allows users to create search strategies for their favorite topics. Weekly alerts on the latest articles published on the specified topics are delivered to the user's e-mail address.

• NC State University Authors Database
  Search by author or department for published articles, books, or patents. Coverage: 1997-present.
• NTIS (National Technical Information Service) (available through Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)
  Indexes the technical report literature.

  The NTIS database "is the preeminent resource for accessing the latest U.S. government-sponsored research and worldwide scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related information...Additionally, information is available from international government departments and other international organizations, including those from Canada, Japan, the former Soviet Union, Western and Eastern European countries." Coverage: 1964- present. Updated biweekly.

• Science Citation Index Expanded (via Web of Science)
  A multidisciplinary database that covers 3,330 major journals across 100 scientific disciplines. Indexes cited references of the articles in the database so you can search by cited author, cited patent or cited paper. This allows you to trace a particular research topic in the scientific literature. Coverage: 1945- present. Updated weekly.
• ScienceDirect
  Web database for scientific research that contains abstracts, articles and full text of more than 1000 Elsevier Science journals in the life, physical, medical, technical, and social sciences. Coverage: Varies by title.

Please note that the NCSU Libraries will not have some of the journals indexed by these databases. To see if we have the journal you need, use the NCSU Libraries catalog to search for the journal title (not the title of the article).

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