The Life Sciences Subject Guide
Use this guide to discover useful resources for conducting research in your subject area.
The University of Sussex's Library Search is a good starting point, as it spans all subjects and searches the university's collections and subscriptions. However, to be more comprehensive in your research, you’ll need to use other resources, databases and collections.
The best place to search will depend on what types of sources you’re looking for, your research topic, and where you are in your research process.
The resources listed on this guide are useful for Life Sciences. (Please note, Chemistry has a separate guide.) This page focuses on where to start and lists some of the most used research databases in this field.
The other pages of this guide list even more resources which are useful for Life Sciences Research, including key journals and more specialist research tools.
Starting Points
- Annual Reviews This link opens in a new window
A database of over 50 Annual Review Journals, providing authoritative critical reviews of key research findings and developments across a broad range of scientific disciplines, including the Biomedical, Life, Physical, and Social Sciences. Written by leading scientists, the articles provide useful overviews of topics, summarizing and analysing the most highly cited research for a particular subject each year.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Full text and abstracts from over 2,500 journals in all fields of science and social sciences such as economics, management and business.
Key Research Databases
- PubMed This link opens in a new window
A search tool for accessing literature citations and linking to full-text journals. Developed by the NCBI in conjunction with publishers of biomedical literature.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of academic journal articles, books and conference proceedings covering all subjects, dating back to 1900. Web of Science consists of multiple different databases including the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Features: citation analysis, researcher profiles, journal metrics, search alerts.
Research Methods
- Sage Research Methods Online This link opens in a new windowA research methods tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects.