BioOne is full text database of current scholarly research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. The resource provides access to publications by 135 nonprofit society and institutional publishers from around the world.
Instructions for using this guide:
BioOne is accessible by going to the Databases section of the Biology subject guide.
From the Biology subject guide to your right, click on Databases.
You are now on the Biology Databases page, which provides links to popular resources for nurses and nursing students.
Click on the link for BioOne, which is located in the middle column.
You are now in the BioOne database.
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When searching for evidence in the literature, it's best to take a structured approach.
Therefore, you should always:
1. Begin with a focused statement or question.
What impact does prescribed burns have on prairie restoration?
When focusing your topic, it may be helpful to ask these questions:
For the topic of burns on prairie restoration, an example of a focused question would be:
Is there a relationship between prescribed burns and prairie restoration?
The next searching tip is to:
2. Identify key concepts of the question or statement.
For our question, is there a relationship between prescribed burns and prairie restoration, the key concepts that we'll want to search on are:
prescribed burns and prairie restoration
To search in BioOne, type your terms in one of the Search Criteria search boxes, which appears in the top-right corner of the page.
With all these possible criteria to choose from, how do you know which to search on?
Article or Chapter Title searches exclusively BioOne article titles, producing a focused yet small number of search results.
Abstract searches the article title and abstract. Abstracts are paragraphs which summarizes the contents of the article.
Full Text searches the actual text of the article. This will bring up the most results, although many of the results will be not as relevant.
To search a summary of each article, which criteria would you use?
Let's try searching for one of our key concepts.
In the Abstract: box, search:
prairie restoration
Click Search.
How many results did you get?
While these results are helpful for our search prairie restoration it does not help with our original question. We need to add additional terms to narrow our search.
In the Abstract: box, add the following to your search:
AND prescribed burns
Need some help?
Using the word AND will find all articles that contain all the specified search terms. This will usually reduce the number of search results.
How many results did you get this time?
With the low number of search results which came up, perhaps we should try an additional term with prescribed burns. Look at the search results and see what other terms are used for prescribed burns. (Search Tip: You can also do a Google search for prescribed burns and see what alternative terms are used.)
Which of the following appear to be a alternative term for burns?
Let's use the term fire as an additional term with prescribed burns.
In the Abstract: box, modify your search so it looks like this:
prairie restoration AND (prescribed burns OR fire)
Using the word OR will find all records that contain either one of the specified search terms. Typically this will broaden the search results.
Our final searching tip is to:
Use limits to focus search results.
In BioOne you can limit by content access and date range.
To apply limits, look for the "Refine By" heading located below our search criteria.
First, lets limit to material we can access "full-text"
Under the heading Refine By select "Only content I can access"
Also, it is sometimes important to limit to articles of a particular date range (usually the most recent).
Under the heading Date Range select from 2009 to 2014.
Now that you have refined and limited your search, lets look at the results.
To read more about a specific article, click on the green Abstract link at the bottom of a search result.
To read the actual article, click on the PDF link at the bottom of a search result.
You have successfully completed the BioOne Tutorial!
If you have questions, or need help searching PubMed, please contact Goshen College Good Library at (574) 535-7431.