Methods - Not always so simple
Lab techniques and methods can appear in a number of different places:
This guide page shows you ways of searching and finding them.
You can use Google to search for the many freely available protocols on the web.
1. Springer Nature Experiments
A database pooling the combined content (>50,000 items) from the journals Nature methods and Nature Protocols along with the full contents of the Springer Protocols book series and a large set of open access items from Nature's Protocol Exchange.
A specialized search engine produced by ACS/CAS (Scifinder) with concise descriptions of thousands of chemical, biochemical and biological methods and includes links to the original published method. You will need to create a SciFinder account to use it.
3. Scientific journals
Many scientific journals publish papers on methods. They can be found using standard databases such as Scopus, PubMed, SciFinder or MethodsNow (a specialized SciFinder methods platform).
Hint 1: Pubmed has a methods indexing term, so you just need to add methods[MeSH Subheading] to your other search terms to retrieve these papers...
e.g. (methods[MeSH Subheading]) AND pcr
Hint 2: Scifinder will find methods papers if you simply include the word methods as one of your search terms
There are almost 100 journals at UniSC with "methods" in the title. Most of these are science, engineering or bioscience journals.
There are many books about methods and protocols in the Library. Some are hard-copy books and others are ebooks. All can be found using the Library catalogue or a Discover search.
Just enter topic words plus "methods" or "protocols" as in the advanced search example below.
The Library holds various volumes of famous methods book series such as:
Methods in Enzymology and Methods in Molecular Biology
These can be found by using the Catalogue option and entering these titles into search box and choosing "is (exact)" from the drop-down options in the illustration above.
The chapters of each of these titles are indexed in PubMed (and Scopus).
Some good basic biochemistry methods can be found in the Techniques and Methodology chapters of Elsevier's online Encyclopedia of Biological Chemistry.
