American Chemical Society
Teaching Chemical Information:
Tips and Techniques
— August 1998 —
Core Resources: Primary Literature: Journals
Teaching Points
Journals Are …
- Where current science is reported
Example: Show NY Times Science Section article (or your local paper's science section), and show journal article it came from - Where the information in textbooks come from.
Example: Principle from your textbook and the journal article(s) which first reported it (e.g. Lewis Acid) - Where you can get more information on a topic
Example: do an online search on a popular topic in whatever database you have available and show titles
Statistics About Journals
- First chemical journal: Chemisches Journal began in 1778
- Today Chemical Abstracts covers ~12,000 chemistry-related journals
Kinds of Journal Articles
- Research articles
- Rapid communications
- Review articles
Sections of a Journal Article
- Abstract
- Experimental
- Results
- Discussion
- References
How to Locate Journal Articles on a Topic
- Chemical Abstracts
- Other subject indexes
- e.g. Science Citation Index, General Science Index
- Other general sources
- e.g. UnCover (indexes tables of contents of approx. 10,000 science journals)
How to Obtain Journal Articles
- Chemical Abstracts Document Delivery Service
- UnCover
- Library's Interlibrary Loan service
Teaching Materials
- Lecture on primary literature
- Exercise on journals
- Stankus, Tony, Making Sense of Journals in the Physical Sciences, Hayworth Press: New York, 1992
- Stankus, Tony, Making Sense of Journals in the Life Sciences, Hayworth Press: New York, 1992