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Exploring the Chemical Literature

Tutorial for students in advanced Analytical Chemistry courses for majors, but useful to anyone interested in using the literature of chemistry.

Welcome

Discover ... Access ... Use

Understanding and using the Scientific Literature is a learning process that starts from the first day of your studies, and continues throughout your career.  Having these skills is an essential part of being an effective, responsible scientist.  Yet your coursework may not include much if any instruction about scientific information, and your professors may just assume you already know all about it.  Here's where we can help.

This tutorial is written for students in CH 456 (Analytical Chemistry for majors) and CH 376K (Advanced Analytical Chemistry) laboratories, but it's also useful to everyone who wants an overview of how to find and use chemical literature.

What This Tutorial Covers

Use the menu to the left to navigate through the topics.  They're arranged in a linear flow, but you can skip to sections you're most interested in.

  • What is the Scientific Literature?
  • What is a research article?
  • What is a review?
  • What is peer review?
  • What does Authority mean in the context of the literature?
  • How do I interpret a reference and get the article?
  • How do I find articles on a specific topic?
  • How do I find books?
  • How do I find encyclopedia articles and handbooks?
  • Using and citing the literature
  • Managing your references

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.