urgent help needed

[paul j]

hello, im paul j. im studying cellular and molecular physiology (graduate degree). i chose my thesis about the anticancer effect of micromeria barbata. the study havent been done here in my area and theres a a local species of the same family called micromeria libanotica. im starting to pannic because i need references in order to finish my bibliography. i cant get access to recent articles related to my topic. all i ask if someone could just send me some articles. it will be the biggest help i could ever ask for and i cant be more thankful for any kind of assistance.

[hypervalent_iodine]

paul, your institution should have access to a number of journals or at the very least, be able to foot the bill for you to get the articles you need. Unfortunately, copyright law means that no one here will be allowed to download articles that are not freely available and send them to you. I would suggest speaking to your supervisor or taking a trip to your library and speaking to someone there.

[CaptainPanic]

hypervalent_iodine is correct: even if the research was publicly funded, the bastards at Elsevier (publishing company) and other publishing companies get the paper, and put a copyright on it. The copyright is then somehow not owned by the author, or the institute/company where the author works, but by a completely different company... And they make everyone pay for it... essentially turning tax funded research into a product. Anyway, that's my little rant. Let's get back on topic.

 

There are good search engines, like sciencedirect.com, which are online. If this particular one is not suited for medical literature, then I am sure there are others.

 

You should at all times be able to search for papers. Getting the .pdf is a different matter, and often means you have to pay. Many institutions have automated that though. My experience is that the search is the hard work... and if you study to become a scientist, you'd better learn searching yourself.

[paul j]

thanks guys. iam doing my work and iam getting all the free articles i can. i surfed through sciencedirect but i just need more references and more backup articles thats all im asking for. anyways u help is highly appreciated and thanks again

[timo]

I'm not sure to what extent it applies to your case, but maybe this helps:

1) The top method to find publications nowadays is Google Scholar.

2) Many papers that are available for purchase are also available for free (via arXiv, some university server, ...). Scholar tends to identify such free sources quite well (at least for all of my publications), for this either

2a) click of the "PDF from xxx" button right to the search result

2b) click on "all xx versions", browse through them, and see if there is a version that is available to you.

 

Btw.: The idea of citing papers is that you read them during your thesis and found them helpful and relevant for the topic at hand. The idea is not that after you finished your work you Google 100 publications with an appropriate-sounding title because everyone else also has 100 papers in their bibliography.

[WilliamC]

Often the authors of research articles will have PDF files freely available for download on their personal or laboratory web sites, even if they are published.

 

Typically these are the unedited articles and not the final edited proof-read version that was published but the information is still there.

 

Also using Pubmed or such you can find some recent articles and email the authors directly for reprints or, again, they might send you a private PDF file for free. This is good for a few critical articles but not for large numbers.

[CaptainPanic]

Ah, so you just need more hits (hits that are on-topic) in your search?

 

Searching on [anticancer effect of micromeria barbata] will give you a certain number of hits. But searching for [use for micromeria barbata] might give different hits, and still be useful. Or look at the most famous authors in the field, and just look up some other their other publications - they might be on topic too. (note: I am no expert, and I have no clue what micromeria barbata means!).

 

Keep searching, and do not forget to refine your search, if possible. For example, scifinder (it's a program, not a website), will allow a very broad search, and then to specifically include or exclude certain keywords from that search, if you get too many hits.