University Now: Internet Research

"PLOS Biology is an open-access, peer-reviewed general biology journal published by PLOS, a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource. New articles are published online weekly; issues are published monthly."  

   PLOS Biology stands for Public Library of Science, Biology

Google is indeed your friend, but try these specialized tools for different, and probably more scholarly, results.

Science.gov - searches 200 million pages of "authoritative U.S. government science information"
JURN - searches millions of free, open access scholarly articles, chapters, and theses

Google Advanced Scholar Search - Search for scholarly articles.
Google Advanced Book Search - Search for books on your topic.

Here are some examples of helpful biology internet resources.  Place the cursor over the link for web site's content discription.  If you have suggestions for additional links, please contact Frank Quinn.

Consider Quality...

These principles of web source evalution are drawn from The St. Martin's Handbook, 8th edition (p. 218-219):

Authorship

Does the site/document have an author? What are the author's credentials? Why should you trust this author as an expert? 

Publisher/Sponsor

Who sponsors or publishes the source? What evidence demonstrates that the sponsor/publisher is credible? What purpose/perspective does the sponsor seem to promote?

Currency

How recently was the information posted or modified? Could it be outdated or obsolete?

Credibility

How do you know that the information itself is trustworthy? Are there links to other sites/sources to support factual claims?

Here you will find some useful websites for this subject area.  Place the cursor over the link for the web site's content discription.  If you have suggestions for additional links, please contact your librarian!