Biological Sciences

As well as physical books the Library also has a number of eBooks - these are designed to be read online although some will let you download for a set period. 

An advantage of eBooks is that as long as you have access to the internet you will be able to access them wherever and whenever you want. Whilst eBooks are designed to be read online you can save/download sections (within copyright guidelines). You can also create an account to highlight and save books to an online bookshelf. 

Searching on Primo will discover both print and electronic books from all of our collections and platforms. If you specifically want eBooks you may also want to use the eBook platforms directly. This will allow you to search through chapters or full-text of that platform's books for information. 

If you want to search all scholarly information the best place to search is a database. Databases include books, journal and magazine articles and conference proceedings. As well as general databases there are also subject specific databases helping to ensure your search is more relevant. You may also consider looking at particular collections of journals or within a specific journal.

To search for relevant articles simply type in your keywords (see constructing your search tutorial for help choosing these). 

Journal Collections:

Databases

What are journals?

Tutorial  on the what why and how of journals          Brief video on reading journals

Open Access is a growing movement where researchers make their findings publicly and legally available for anyone to access. It may be that we do not have access to an article via subscription, but the research is openly and legally available elsewhere in a different format. There are also repositories of research data that are openly accessible and available to use. UK researchers for example, normally deposit a copy of their work into their institutional repository, and there are a variety of tools you can use to find these.

While Open Access journals are generally available in PRIMO, some recommended tools for finding 'hidden' open access content are listed below. Feel free to contact your information specialist for further assistance or information.

When using open access items it is important to understand that some open access items, such as 'pre-prints' are early draft versions of the work prior to passing peer-review.

At this point in your study, where you may not yet be knowledgeable enough to discern the quality of the methods, it is best to use Open Access 'author's drafts' where the final version has been published in a journal. This will give you some assurance of quality.

You should reference peer-reviewed open access items as if they were the published item and usually, there is guidance on this on the paper itself. There are even some established journals which are fully open access, which have their own peer-review systems.

The British Library runs a service called EThOS, which enables individuals to register online at http://ethos.bl.uk and access UK PhD theses. EThOS currently provides details of more than 250,000 theses, many of which are available electronically and can be downloaded from EThOS including all Plymouth PhD theses. 

Plymouth theses can also be accessed from PEARL (the university repository) via Primo along with a selection of Masters theses.

PQDT Open

PQDT Open is a source of (mostly) North American theses that have been published as Open Access which complements the British collection held in EThOS.

BoB (Box of Broadcasts) is an online off-air TV and radio recording service.

BoB enables you to choose and record any broadcast programme from 60+ TV and radio channels. The recordings are kept indefinitely (no expiry) and added to a growing media archive (currently well over 1 million programmes). 

It allows you to record and catch-up on missed programmes, schedule recordings in advance, edit programmes into clips, create playlists, embed clips into the DLE, share what you are watching with others, search a growing archive of material, and more.