Research Guides: Soil Science Research Guide: Finding Articles

Databases: Highly Recommended

Agricola
[ProQuest] Primary database for agricultural research covering animal science, horticulture, entomology, forestry, land management, nutrition, pesticides, soil science and other related topics.
ScienceDirect (Elsevier)
[Elsevier] Leading full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters from more than 2,500 journals and almost 20,000 books. Set up a personal account to obtain special services such as table of contents mailings.
BIOSIS Previews
[Clarivate] An expansive index to life sciences and biomedical research covering pre-clinical and experimental research, methods and instrumentation, animal studies, and more.

FS INFO Database
Indexes forest and range research of interest to researchers and managers in the US Forest Service, with links to fulltext if available.

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

Databases: Also Recommended

AGRIS
Catalog and index to the collections of the National Agricultural Library, as well as a primary public source for world-wide access to agricultural information. The database covers materials in all formats and periods, including printed works from the 15th century.
CE Database - American Society of Civil Engineers
Index to all of the society publications - journals, conference publications, and books - with access to over 97,000 bibliographic and abstracted records. If you get a 502 Bad Gateway error, please clear your browser cookies and try the link again.
Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management
[ProQuest]
Broad ranging index to environmental science and pollution publications in scientific journals, conference proceedings, reports, monographs, books and government publications.
Geobase
[Elsevier]
Index to research literature on the earth sciences, ecology, geology, human and physical geography, environmental sciences, oceanography, geomechanics, alternative energy sources, pollution, waste management, and nature conservation.
SciFinderⁿ
Research discovery tool that provides access to the world's literature in chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering. As the most comprehensive resource for research in chemistry and chemistry-related fields, it also provides access to research from many related scientific disciplines, including biomedical sciences, materials science, agricultural science, and more. You will need to complete the registration process to access the database.
For information about access and use, visit our SciFinderⁿ Guide.

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

Google Scholar
Indexes scholarly journal articles and web pages in all academic disciplines

NTIS Database (National Technical Information Service)
Indexes over 3 million publications covering over 350 subject areas including technical, scientific, and related-business reports, produced by or for a government agency. Some international reports are included.
US Government Publications Monthly Catalog
Finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive records for historical and current publications and provides direct links to those that are available online. Users can search by authoring agency, title, subject, and general key word, or click on "Advanced Search" for more options.
WorldCat
Identify and locate resources in library collections worldwide. Connect to materials at Cal Poly Humboldt and other libraries from WorldCat records and article citations.

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:

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 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.

Google Scholar

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

SpringerLink
Includes fulltext articles from 750 journals published by Springer from Vol. 1 of each journal.
Oxford Journals
Includes fulltext articles from journals published by Oxford University Press from 1996 to the present with article indexing back to Vol. 1 of each journal
Wiley Online Library
Includes fulltext articles from over 1,100 journals published by Wiley-Blackwell from 1997 to the present with article indexing back to Vol. 1 of each journal.