AS 1006 - Introduction to Animal Science

To start, familiarize yourself with the Journal of Animal Science and the Journal of Dairy Science, two of the most important journals for animal scientists.  Also look at Animal Frontiers for what's new in animal agriculture.

The two databases with the most animal science content are Agricultural & Environmental Science Database and ScienceDirect. 

You can also use Summon, the Library's search engine, to search many databases at the same time. This can be helpful if you haven't defined your topic and want to see what has been written in an area. 

Learning how to read and understand scientific literature will help you learn about current trends. More importantly, it will help you learn the facts and make your own decisions based on good information.

If you have answered "yes" to these five questions you have probably located a scientific article.

Research articles are also often known as scientific or peer-reviewed articles. If the article is NOT written by the person or group who did the research, it is NOT a peer-reviewed or scientific article. Research articles are important for knowing what new discoveries have been made. This is why it is important to use recent articles, since they will be the first things published on a new scientific development. 

Here's a quick overview of how to identify these journal articles:

• written by the scientist(s) who actually did the research
• follows a specific format 
  • abstract
  • introduction
  • materials & methods
  • results
  • conclusions
  • references 
• assumes reader already knows background information about the topic has been evaluated by experts
• Tip:  Look for a statement about when the article was accepted for publication. Most peer-reviewed articles will include one.

RefWorks is a new way to collect, manage, and organize research.  You can read, annotate, organize, and cite your research as well as collaborate by sharing collections.

From simple bibliographies to papers formatted with in-text citations or footnotes, RefWorks handles it all. ​To learn more about RefWorks, use our RefWorks research guide.