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Soil Science Research Guide

Databases: Highly Recommended

Popular, Scholarly, and Trade Professional Sources in the Natural Resources & Sciences

Databases: Also Recommended

How to Pre-Read Scholarly Articles

Looking For A Specific Journal?

Use the Journal Finder to search for journal titles by name.

Other Databases to Consider

Soil Science Journals

The research paper published in a peer-reviewed journal represents the most important "primary" source of information in soil science. The Literature of Scienceresearch guide discusses other general information sources in the sciences, including soil science.

In the HSU Library the Journal and Newpaper Finder lists soil science journals by journal title that are available to HSU students, facutly and staff. If not available locally copies can be requested through the Library's efficient Interlibrary Loan Service.

The following sources list important soil science journals by title:

Soil Journal
  • Journals Ranked by Impact--select "Soil Science". Lists the ten most highly cited soil science journals.
  • "Primary Journals in Soil Science" (McDonald) IN Literature of Soil Science (McDonald) 1994 (S 590.45 L58 1994), pp 257-274. List 44 core soil science journals and serials.
  • Science Citation Index-Soil Science-Journal List Lists the 22 core journals covered in the Science Citation Index.
  • SCImago Journal & Country Rank -- select the subject area "Agricultural and Biological Sciences" and then the subject category "Soil Science". Lists over 60 highly cited soil science journals.
  • "Soil Science" (Casler and Schneider) IN Using the Agricultural, Environmental and Food Literature (Hutchinson and Greider) 2002 (ref S 494.5 A39 U75 2002), pp 451-487. Lists 43 soil science journals and serials.

Databases listed in Articles and Databases: Soil Science can be used to find individual research papers by author, subject, taxonomic category, habitat type, life stage, chemical compound, geographic area, etc. Most HSU Library literature databases include Find It @ HSU links from each record to the matching journal record in the Journal and Newspaper Finder.

Google Scholar

Link your Google Scholar results to HSU and see which articles you have access to as an HSU student. Under Google Scholar settings, set "Library Links" to include Humboldt State University! View this short video for demonstration on how to do this.

How do I find journal articles on my topic?

There are search strategy guides tailored to science: Identifying Concepts and Generating Search Terms and AND, OR, NOT (Boolean Operators).

Citation Searching

If you know of an article on your topic, you may use Citation Linker to locate the article.  

Always look at the References list at the end of each relevant article you find, to see if any of the listed sources might be useful!

Google Scholar is useful when searching citations. The Advanced Scholar Search option is the best way to search for articles which cite a known article. Check the "Cited by #" link below a search result to find additional useful sources - more recent articles which cite that relevant or classic article.  

More ways to search citations may also be found in the Citation Searching section of Searching the Scientific Literature.

Peer-Reviewed Article?

Peer-reviewed articles have been read and evaluated by experts in the field to determine their quality and relevance to the subject they address before being published. 

The links below explain more about peer-reviewed articles and the peer-review process.

Peer Review in 3 Minutes is a brief tutorial, from North Carolina State University that explains the peer review process in detail.

Publishers