Libraries

Today's hours:

Ask a Librarian
FAQ

Biology

This guide will help you navigate information resources in biology.

Finding Articles & Full Text

To find articles, search the databases listed below. When you find an article you like, look for links that will send you to the full-text of the article- publisher links or Vassar College full text links.

If you have difficulty finding the full-text or hit a paywall, search Vassar 's journal holdings or use L ibrary Search to see if the Library owns the journal and has the year/volume you need.

If Vassar does not subscribe to the issue you need, submit an InterLibrary Loan request using ILLiad.

Multidisciplinary Databases for Finding Scholarly Articles

Web of Science
Database of articles from over 10,000 scholarly journals spanning the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Indexing goes back to 1984. This database provides cited reference searching capability.
Scopus
Database of articles from over 17,000 scholarly journals spanning the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Indexing for many journals begins in 1996 but there is historical coverage for journals published by Elsevier, Springer, and some chemistry and physics society publishers. This database provides cited reference searching capability.

Google Scholar
Links to peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations

Subject Specific Databases

PubMed
Database of scholarly articles relevant to biomedicine and clinical medicine. This database contains citations from 1950 to the present, with some older material.

Agricola (a.k.a. NAL Catalog)
Database of articles and other resources encompassing all aspects of agriculture and allied disciplines, including animal and veterinary sciences, entomology, plant sciences, forestry, aquaculture and fisheries, farming and farming systems, agricultural economics, extension and education, food and human nutrition, and earth and environmental sciences.
GreenFILE
Database of articles from journals, government publications, and general interest titles relevant to human impact on the environment including global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
Environment Complete
Database of articles relevant to agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more.
Health Reference Center Academic
Health Reference Center Academic integrates millions of articles from a wide range of full-text nursing and allied health journals, newspapers, magazines, newsletters and select consumer health information sources with full-text reference works and hundreds of health-related multimedia.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
The BHL collects and digitizes published literature on biological diversity to ensure that this biodiversity heritage is made available to a global audience through open access principles. The BHL serves texts with information on over a 150 million species names.

Databases for Popular & Scholarly Articles

ProQuest
Database of articles from over 4,500 journals, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers. Subject coverage spans the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The diverse mix of publication types and broad subject scope makes this database a useful starting point.
Academic OneFile
Database of articles from over 14,000 journals, popular magazines, and newspapers. Subject coverage spans the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Like ProQuest, the diverse mix of publication types and broad subject scope makes this database another useful starting point.