Biological sciences: Home

Also includes conversion tables for area, distance, energy, fuel consumption, power, speed, temperature and weight - just click on the 'Gadgets' link.

Most titles are listed on the Enterprise catalogue.

Help and guidance
A Help Tour and Research Quick Tips are available by clicking the button at the top right of the page. Research Quick Tips are short videos to assist learners during the research process. Credo supports Boolean searching and truncation using an asterisk (*).

It also contains a wide range of English dictionaries; bilingual dictionaries of French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Latin; thesauri; and guides to English grammar and usage.

Timelines link over 2,000 key events in 20th century history in the areas of Art and Architecture; Performing Arts; Literature; Politics and Government; Society; Science, Technology and Medicine; and War.

Individual titles are listed on the Library catalogue.

Help and guidance
Tour of Oxford Reference

Web of Science gives access to a range of databases which can be searched individually or simultaneously:

-BIOSIS Previews - biological sciences
-Current Contents Connect
-Data Citation Index - research data from international repositories
-Derwent Innovations Index - patents in engineering
-FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts) 
-Medline - biomedical sciences
-Policy Citation Index - reports from government and non-governmental organisations
-SciELO Citation Index - literature in sciences, arts and humanities from journals from Latin America, Portugal, Spain and South Africa
-Web of Science Core Collection - made up of the Arts and Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences Citation Indexes, plus a number of other databases

The cross-search also includes open access journals and open archive repositories.

Also available via Web of Science:

-JCR (Journal Citation Reports) 

Help and guidance
Web of Science Training Portal

It is unclear which publishers are included in Google Scholar, so it shouldn't be used as your only source for a comprehensive literature search. For references to reliable, academic sources search our Summon discovery service or databases covering your subject.

Link to our full-text
You can set your preferences on Google Scholar to show links to full-text articles in all of our e-journals.

1) Click on the three lines on the top left of the home screen.
2) Select 'Settings'.
3) Select 'Library Links' on the left of the screen.
4) In the search box type 'Reading' and select the 'Reading University Library - Full-Text @ Reading' option.
5) Save your settings.

When you do a search, look for a 'Full-Text @ Reading' link to the right of references in your results list. This indicates that we have a subscription which will give you access to the article. Click on this link to access the full-text.

If the 'Full-text @ Reading' link does not appear next to a reference it indicates that it isn't covered by our subscriptions and you probably won't be able to access the article.

If you are off-campus you will need to login to access the articles. You will usually be prompted to login as soon as you click on the link to the article. If this doesn't happen you will need to look for an institutional or Shibboleth login link once you reach the journal's website. For more guidance see Accessing e-journals.

Google Scholar Button
Google have produced a plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Safari which allows you to easily search for and cite articles. Highlight the title of an article in the page you are reading and then click the Scholar button and it will search for the article on Google Scholar in a pop up window. To get a formatted reference for a search result press the quote button next to it and the reference will appear in three different styles.

To make the most of this tool set up the University of Reading as a 'Library Link' using the instructions above.

We also have access to PubMed on Web of Science from 1950 to the present day. 

It gives references to journal articles in the biomedical sciences including: biotechnology and bioengineering; clinical medicine; drugs and toxicology; forensic medicine; health affairs; non-clinical aspects of health care; psychiatry. Covers 1950 to the present day.

Help and guidance
Help using PubMed 
To save searches and set up alerts, you will need to use a third-party sign-in option, such as Facebook or Google. It is not possible to use your University login credentials for this purpose.