Biology

Good research involves lots of work.  You want accurate, authoritative, and comprehensive information for your research.  Searching just one database or using one search engine will not allow you to find all the relevant information you need. 

There is no one database that indexes every published article even in its own field.

Think of search engines and databases as tools rather than guides or web pages.  You use them to accomplish something; you use them to find needed information.  But like any tool, they have their limitations.

Google Scholar is a search engine not a database and many times cannot provide you with full-text (complete text articles) articles you need.  Biological Abstracts focuses in on about 4,000 biology journals- but the number of published journals that deal with life sciences and might have relevance to your research is many thousands more than that.  You cannot use one tool for all your needs.

Use this portion of this guide to help begin navigating the "data smog" that hovers over all information sources today.

The pamphlet titled Database Searching Basics (PDF) has information about how databases find things and tips on how to do more efficient searching.