Pre-Health: Home

AGRICOLA is the National Agriculture Library Catalog and it provides citations to agricultural literature.

BioOne includes the full-texts of bioscience research journals focused on biological, ecological, and environmental sciences.

CDC Chemical Safety is a cumulative list of chemical databases, which contain acute and chronic health effects information of being exposed to a myriad number of hazardous chemicals. Some of these chemicals may be systemic toxins, carcinogens, reproductive toxicants, neurological toxicants, sensitizers, immunological agents, dermatopathic agents, pneumoconiotic agents, or asthmagens. These databases also contain chemical information on reactivity, explosiveness, and other physical properties, such as, molecular weight, vapor pressure, and flammability.

Disaster Lit: Resource Guide for Disaster Medicine and Public Health is a database of links to disaster medicine and public health documents available on the Internet at no cost. Documents include expert guidelines, research reports, conference proceedings, training classes, factsheets, websites, databases, and similar materials selected from over 700 organizations for a professional audience. Materials are selected from non-commercial publishing sources and supplement disaster-related resources from PubMed (biomedical journal literature) and MedlinePlus (health information for the public).

PubChem provides information on the biological activities of small molecules. PubChem is organized as three linked databases within the NCBI's Entrez information retrieval system. These are PubChem Substance, PubChem Compound, and PubChem BioAssay. PubChem also provides a fast chemical structure similarity search tool.

PubMed provides access to bibliographic information that includes MEDLINE, OLDMEDLINE, as well as: * The out-of-scope citations (e.g., articles on plate tectonics or astrophysics) from certain MEDLINE journals, primarily general science and chemistry journals, for which the life sciences articles are indexed for MEDLINE. * Citations that precede the date that a journal was selected for MEDLINE indexing. * Some additional life science journals that submit full text to PubMedCentral and receive a qualitative review by NLM.

PubMed Central is a digital archive of life sciences journal literature managed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).

Science.gov is a gateway to over 50 million pages of authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. government agencies, including research and development results.

TOXNET are databases on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, environmental health, and toxic releases from the US National Library of Medicine.

Primary vs. Secondary Sources in the Sciences 

Primary Sources

When we speak of Primary source material in the Sciences, what we are basically talking about is original research -- the work researchers do in the laboratory and then write up and publish in formal lab reports and/or research articles that you will encounter in the Scientific Journals.

Primary sources provide:

• A detailed description of experiments
• References to other experiments and scientists in the field
• Source material for latest findings

One finds Primary source material in the Academic Journals that cover specific disciplines or in published conference proceedings.

As Primary source material presents original research, the articles tend to be narrow in focus and difficult to read unless you are an expert in the specific subject area of the research. The target audience is other people in the same field that share the common terminology.

Primary sources are important in that they are the original source of new knowledge. Primary source articles are often cited or referred to in other articles -- sometimes a secondary source or sometimes other original articles.

Secondary Sources

In the sciences, secondary sources are those that discuss the original research of others. They often summarize, interpret, and analyze material found in primary source research. Often, a secondary source such as a science periodical or a trade magazine will be the first place you would hear about some new original research. These articles provide enough citation information so that you can track down the Primary source material. 

Secondary Sources provide context for the Primary Source material, giving readers:

• Summaries of scientific work
• Perspective
• Facts

Some examples of Secondary Sources are:

• Science periodicals like Scientific American or Natural History or the Science section of the New York Times
• Review Articles in Scientific Journals
• Annual Reviews
• Websites like Science Daily

Secondary sources are written in language that is more accessible to a broader audience -- not just for those well-versed in a specific field. As they are not the original source of information, they lack the detailed description of the experiments and research that will be found in the Primary source.