Indexes to Marine Biology Literature

• BIOSIS via Web of Science (1926 - Present)
  
  Search here first. This is the online equivalent to Biological Abstracts and Biological Abstracts/RRM. It is the most comprehensive index of the biological literature and hence does a great job covering marine biology. BIOSIS has an "alert" feature that lets you set up a subject profile to have citations and abstracts automatically emailed to you as new records are added to the database. BIOSIS indexes over 5,000 journals, as well as non-journal literature, providing you with access to up to 18 million records from 1926 to the present. Details of these, along with abbreviated titles, ISSN, publication frequency, publisher name and address etc., can be found in the print copy BIOSIS Serial Sources.
  
  
• Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) via CSA
  
  By searching here, you can pick up literature not indexed in BIOSIS. There are some very useful journals and series indexed here and not in BIOSIS. Two examples are "Journal of Cephalopod Biology" and the "California Island Symposia". Note, however, some of the more ephemeral literature is less likely to be found in Stanford's collections and may be difficult to obtain. Coverage in ASFA goes back to 1971, but there are also many records before 1971 for selected journal titles such as Limnology & Oceanography, Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, Deep-Sea Research, and Journal of Physical Oceanography.
  
  
• Zoological Record via Web of Science (1864 - Present)
  
  Zoological Record, produced by BIOSIS, provides extensive coverage of the world's zoological and animal science literature, covering all research from biochemistry to veterinary medicine. The database provides an easily searched collection of references from over 5,000 international serial publications, plus books, meetings, reviews and other non serial literature from over 100 countries. Zoological Record has long been recognized as the "unofficial register" for taxonomy and systematics, but other topics are also given comprehensive treatment using indexing in both controlled-and natural-language format.
  
  
• Science Citation Index via Web of Science (1900 - Present)
  
  A citation index provides a unique approach to searching the literature. With a recent article, you use its bibliography to go back in time. In a way, the citation index lets you do the reverse. You can take and an older article and see who has cited that article since it was published. Unlike other indexed, this one indexes editorial, letters to the editor, book reviews, etc. Also, since coverage in the citation section is limited only by what an author cites, it is one place you can sometimes verify citations to book chapters. There are 5,100 journals indexed in the web version of Science Citation. Of those 3,300 journals are indexed cover-to-cover. Coverage in Science Citation Index goes back to 1900, but there is no time limit for the citation index. Science Citation Index has an "alert" feature that lets you set up a subject or citation profile to have citations and abstracts automatically emailed to you as new records are added to the database. Also available is the Journal Citation Report which lets you look at the impact factor of science journals.
  
  
• Medline vis Ovid or Medline via PubMed or Medline via Web of Science
  
  While the name Medline implies medicine, the database actually covers basic biology very well. When marine organisms are used as model systems or as a source of new pharmaceuticals, they can show up here. Note that Medline only indexes refereed journal articles. It does not include proceedings, book chapter, etc.
  
  
• Dissertation Abstracts
  
  Dissertations can be a great source of information, but are not usually covered by standard indexes. The above link is for US dissertations. For Canadian dissertations go to the Theses Canada Portal.
  
  
• Hopkins Marine Stations - Student Papers
  
  This is a searchable bibliographic file of undergraduate papers done at Hopkins Marine Station. Most of the papers are by Stanford students taking 175H and 176H Spring Class. These papers date back to 1963, and citations and abstracts for these continue to be added each year. There are also 39 papers done by Carleton College student who were at Hopkins in 1976 and 1983. UC Berkeley also taught classes here every summer from 1947 through 1952, and records for the 246 papers from those classes are included. All the papers in the database are archived in the Miller Library. They are shelved with the journals alphabetically under Stanford, Carleton, and University of California Berkeley, respectively. Papers done for the Marine Botany class were written in HTML and are available full-text on the web.
  
  
• Avano
  
  This is an open archives harvester of full-text documents in marine and aquatic sciences. It is hosted by Ifremer.
  
  
• Cumulative Bibliography on the History of Oceanography, 1987-2001
  
  The Cumulative Bibliography on the History of Oceanography (CBHO) was published annually in the History of Oceanography Newsletter beginning in 1987 and through 1997, in order to gather in one place the scattered literature on the history of oceanography. CBHO strives to list all works on the history of oceanography. Biographical items like biographies and obituaries are compiled separately. CBHO was compiled from 1987 to 1997 by Jacqueline Carpine-Lancre, Librarian of the Musee Oceanographique in Monaco and Secretary of the Commission of Oceanography of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science, Division of History of Science. Citations from 1987 t0 2001 were compiled by Deborah Day, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archivist, and are listed at the end of this bibliography (not interspersed throughout the initial alphabetical arrangement.) CBHO includes all works on the history of oceanography, except biographical items like biographies and obituaries. There is no comprehensive bibliography on the history of oceanography before 1987.
  
  
• Bibliography of Genetic Variation in Natural Populations
  
  This bibliography of over 25,000 references has been accumulated over the last 25 years by Fred Allendorf of the University of Montana. The primary focus is the study of genetic variation in natural populations of animals, plants, and microbes. The secondary focus has been conservation, with an emphasis on the application of genetic principles to conservation. Nevertheless, it is a somewhat eclectic collection of titles that reflects his sometimes wandering interests and teaching responsibilities over the years (evolution, human genetics, etc.).
  
  There is a taxonomic bias in this bibliography towards fish, especially salmon, trout, and their kin. There has been no effort to exclude papers dealing with the genetics and conservation of other taxa, but there has been an effort to include more papers on the general biology and natural history of salmonid fishes.
  
  
• Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management Abstracts
  
  Search, separately or combined, these 13 files offering abstracts for the worldwide literature covering the environmental sciences including air, land, water and noise pollution, bacteriology, ecology, toxicology, risk assessment, environmental biotechnology and engineering, waste management, water resources, policies and regulations, and U.S. federal environmental impact statements. Abstracts and citations are drawn from over 1500 scientific journals and thousands of other sources including conference proceedings, reports, monographs, books and government publications. (Updated monthly. Over 76,000 records/year.)
  
  
• Arctic & Antarctic Regions
  
  Worldwide collection of cold regions research compiled by the Library of Congress, Science and Technology Division. This multidisciplinary database is a compilation of 10 specialized bibliographies. Records include 40 years of publications from Bibliography on cold regions science and technology, and 27 years of publications from Antarctic bibliography. Coverage goes back to 1800. (Updates semi-annually.)



• Biodiversity Heritage Library
  
  Ten major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom have joined to form the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project. The participating libraries own over two million volumes of biodiversity literature collected over 200 years to support the work of scientists, researchers, and students in their home institutions and throughout the world. The Biodiversity Heritage Library’s “biodiversity commons” website provides digitized access to a growing subset of this literature. It is especially useful for full-text of articles going back as far as 1480 that are out of copyright.