A great place to find topic ideas, or to start
exploring a topic is at sciencedaily.com.
ScienceDaily compiles information about new
scientific studies so you can stay up to date
with the latest scientific discoveries and
developments.
New content is added daily.
These articles are written to be accessible
for the general public.
They explain scientific research in a way
that is easy to understand.
As you can see on the home page, the latest
news and headlines are at the top.
You can also scroll down to see recent news
in different sections.
To go directly to marine biology topics, you
can go to the page on Marine Biology News,
which I’ve linked below.
Here you can explore recent news articles.
If none of those sound interesting, you can
review the Earlier Headlines, which you can
view as summaries or headlines listed by date.
Looking through the results, I’m interested
in the headline: “Mysterious Glowing Coral
Reefs: Fighting to Live.”
I’ve always been fascinated by coral reefs,
so this could be an interesting research topic.
When I click on the article, the full Summary
appears at the top.
Just above that is the source of the article.
In this case, the article is from the University
of Southampton.
When we scroll down to the bottom of the article,
you can see that the original source is linked.
This is where the article originally appeared.
Underneath the source, there is a journal
reference.
This is because the article is discussing
an original research study that was recently
published in a scholarly journal.
Scholarly journals, also referred to as peer-reviewed
journals, contain articles written by expert
researchers and scholars.
Notice that there is a link called a DOI.
DOI stands for digital object identifier,
but you don’t have to remember that.
Just know that the DOI is a unique number
attached to the article, that helps you find
it In this case, the DOI is linked, and when
we click on it, we get a pdf of the article.
That was easy!
Unfortunately, not all articles are freely
available.
Some articles are housed in databases which
the library pays for.
You can always use the information in the
reference citation to search for the article
in the library website.
If we don’t provide access, you still have
another option.
You can fill out an interlibrary loan request,
or ILL for short.
I’ll link to more information about that
below.
In short, when you submit an ILL request,
we work with other libraries across the country
to find a copy of the article, which we can
send to your email in 1-2 days.
No matter how you access the article, it’s
always a good idea to look at the original
research and cite it in your work.
Citation information is available at the bottom
of the page.
Make sure you select APA format, and double
check the formatting before you copy it into
your references list.
