Research Guides: Plant Sciences: Find Articles

Tip: Peer Reviewed Articles

Peer reviewed articles are:

written by experts in the field
use terms and language that are discipline-specific
assessed for validity and scholarly rigor by other experts in the field before publication (peer review)
published by professional organizations or societies, universities, research centers, or scholarly presses

Strategies for finding peer reviewed articles:

Use a library database and limit your search to only peer reviewed articles, you may also see phrases like Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals.
Learn if a journal is peer-reviewed:
- Some databases allow you to click on the journal title to get more information about it.
- Or check the journal's website to see whether or not the journal uses a peer-review process in its publishing practices.

Library Databases

Academic Search Complete
Academic and peer-reviewed articles from 11,000+ journals in most subject areas. Full text for many (but not all) articles.
Agricola
The National Agricultural Library, as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, produces the NAL Catalog (AGRICOLA) database. This free database contains records for books and articles on agriculture and its allied disciplines.
BioOne
Explore more than 350 journals (full text) and eBooks in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences.
JSTOR
Provides access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines. Our subscription is generally limited to full text coverage from the beginning of each publication to about 3-5 years ago.
Nature
Nature is a weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions.
Science
Science, founded by Thomas A. Edison in 1880 and published by AAAS, today ranks as the world's largest circulation general science journal. Published 51 times a year, Science is renowned for its highly cited, peer-reviewed research papers, its special strength in life science disciplines, and its award-winning coverage of breaking science news. Full-text from 1997-present.

Finding Journals

Are you wondering if we have a particular journal? Do you have a citation like the following and want to know if the article is available in one of our databases?

Craig W. Greene, Linda L. Gregory, Glen H. Mittelhauser, Sally C. Rooney, Jill E. Weber "Vascular flora of the Acadia National Park region, Maine," Rhodora, 107(930), 117-185, (1 August 2005)

The name of the journal in the citation above is Rhodora. To find out if we have access to this journal, do a title search for Rhodora in our EBSCO FIND A JOURNAL.

This shows that the full text of articles from Rhodora are available in our database BioOne.2 from 2005 to present. Since our citation above shows that the article we want is from 1998, we should be able to find it in this database.

Journals

American Forests
Articles aimed at maintaining and improving the health and value of trees and forests, to attract and cultivate the interests of citizens, industry and government in trees and forests.
American Journal of Botany
ublished by the Botanical Society of America continuously since 1914, the American Journal of Botany (AJB) is the Society’s flagship research journal. AJB publishes peer-reviewed, innovative, significant research of interest to a wide audience of scientists in all areas of plant biology (e.g., biodiversity, structure, function, development, genetics, evolution, reproduction, systematics), all levels of organization (molecular to ecosystem), and all plant groups and allied organisms (cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, and lichens).
The Botanical Review
The Botanical Review publishes articles on a broad spectrum of botanical fields, such as systematics, phytogeography, cladistics, evolution, physiology, ecology, morphology, paleobotany, and anatomy.
The Bryologist
The Bryologist began publication in 1898, and includes articles on all aspects of the biology of mosses, hornworts, liverworts and lichens; lists of current literature with world-wide coverage; and book reviews.
Economic Botany
Economic Botany bridges the gap between pure and applied botany by publishing interdisciplinary work on the rich relationship that exists between plants and people, including the past, present, and potential uses of plants.
Nature
Nature is a weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions.
Rhodora
Rhodora, which began publication in 1899, publishes work relating to the botany of North America and covers topics such as systematics, floristics, ecology, evolution, biogeography, and population genetics.
Science
Science is renowned for its highly cited, peer-reviewed research papers, its special strength in life science disciplines, and its award-winning coverage of breaking science news.
Systematic Botany
Systematic Botany, published by the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, publishes papers on botanical topics such as taxonomy, systematics, speciation, morphometrics, molecular phylogeny, conservation, biogeography, and methods.
Weed Science
Weed Science publishes fundamental research directly related to all aspects of weed science in agricultural systems, including topics such as herbicide resistance, weed control tools, chemistry, and genetics.