LSC 365 - The Human Organism
Gina Hupton, Instructor
Leslee Shell, Librarian
Research Paper on Health and Beauty Products
Objective: Perform a literature search on an ingredient in a common commercial health product and write a short research paper on your findings. In this library session you will search for 5-10 peer-reviewed articles on the ingredient. Two of these must be primary research articles.
Peer reviewed articles are those that have been reviewed and approved for publication by an editorial board. Primary research articles present original research findings. To identify your article as a primary research article, look for tables of data, evidence that the authors did the research themselves, and standard scholarly sections of material and methods, results, and references.
Choosing a Topic
Use the National Library of Medicine's Household Products Database to identify health and beauty products and ingredients. A commercial web site, GNC Live Well has information about herbal supplements, health and beauty and other products. Both sites are good places to browse to find ingredients in common health and beauty products.
Finding Property Information
Use the ASU Libraries subject guide Index to Physical, Chemical and Other Property Data to see Instructions and a description of resources that contain information about safety and toxicological properties of ingredients.
Resources
Scirus - Like a Google for science, Scirus is a search engine for science information on the web. It's a good place to get an overview of what's available on this topic.
When using Scirus, you may not have access to the full text of an article. You can see whether our library has the full text by using Journal Title Lookup on the Fletcher Library home page . If you need to borrow the article from another ASU library or you need an article that ASU does not have, open an ILLiad account, or use your ILLiad password. For more information about finding full-text in the library read The Truth About Full-Text.
Medical Databases
Use medical databases to search for information about the health and safety of the ingredient you choose to research.
Medlline and CINAHL are two good medical databases that will be helpful in finding peer-reviewed and primary research articles. You can find these two databases in the A-Z list on the Fletcher Library homepage.
The Database Finder can be helpful in locating additional health and medical databases. Select Heatlh, Medicine, or Nursing as subjects.
Science Databases and Tools
The following databases can be useful in finding information about your projects. They are all located in the A-Z list on the Fletcher Library web site.
knovel: Scientific and Engineering Databases