LibGuides: Food Science: Journals & Databases

What's new?

The University of Otago Library has updated to the latest interface, for the SciFinder Scholar (CAS) database.

The database is now called SciFinder-n.

First time users must register to use the database, which you can do by clicking here. If you have previously registered using the old version of SciFinder, this existing login will work for SciFinder-n.

Click here to access a short training video from the J. Murrey Atkins Library on using the platform to find chemical literature & substance data, or get in touch with your Subject Librarian to find out more.

Specialised Food Science Databases

Nutrition and Food Sciences This link opens in a new window
Covers sports nutrition, general nutrition, and food science journals. More coverage for nutrition than for food science.

VITIS-VEA (Viticulture and Enology Abstracts)
VITIS-VEA is a free, international English-language literature database in the field of viticulture, enology, and related fields from the Julius Kuhn-Institut, Germany. Most of the sources are journals, with a small number of monographs and conference proceedings.

New Zealand Food Composition Database This link opens in a new window
Contains information on the nutrient content of over 2700 foods commonly prepared and eaten in New Zealand. To access the data, first-time users need to register for a username/password.

General Science Databases

Scopus This link opens in a new window
A multidisciplinary database of research literature, including conference proceedings. Incorporates the ScienceDirect e-journals collection. Contains records from the Medline database.
Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary: high-impact journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as international conference and symposia proceedings. Records go back to 1900.
Web of Science All Databases This link opens in a new window
Search across Web of Science Core Collection, BIOSIS Citation Index, Current Contents Connect, Inspec, KCI-Korean Journal Database, Medline, SciELO Citation Index and Zoological Record for comprehensive, multidisciplinary results. 1864+
SciFinder (registration) This link opens in a new window
First-time users must register at this site before accessing ScFinder.
SciFinder (from CAS) This link opens in a new window
SciFinder is the current platform for SciFinder. First time users must register before use. This comprehensive database for chemical reactions, substances, structures and indexed chemistry patents includes journal abstracts, patents and other literature references on all areas of science and its applications. Also containing detailed information on compounds and substances including their properties, reactions and full synthetic methods as well as protein and nucleotide sequences. A sophisticated Retrosynthesis Planner available can also be found in SciFinder.

PubChem
PubChem is a freely accessible online database for chemical information, providing comprehensive information on various chemical entities. Search chemicals by name, molecular formula, structure, and other identifiers.

Agricultural Science Collection (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
A database for researchers in agriculture, farming systems, food and human nutrition, forestry and plant sciences.
Biological Science Collection (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
The Biological Science Database covers biological science fields including animal behavior, aquatic life and fisheries, chemoreception, biochemistry, ecology, plant science, toxicology, virology, microbiology, immunology genetics, health and safety science, oncogenes, entomology, and endocrinology neuroscience.

Recommended Food Policy, Culture and History Databases

ProQuest Central
Large multidisciplinary article database. Good for topics related to food policy and consumer behaviour. Indexes a wide range of publications in addition to scholarly journals, e.g. newspapers and trade magazines.
Historical Abstracts
Leading index for journals covering world history from 1450 to the present (excluding US & Canada), including food history and food culture.

Assess your findings

Evaluating and thinking critically about sources of information are important skills to develop and apply while undertaking research.

Not all information is reliable and appropriate for academic work, and not all information is relevant to your particular topic.

You should challenge and reflect on information that you find; don’t just accept everything you read.

Rauru Whakarare Evaluation Framework

Assess sources, based on:
OROKOHANGA - ‘The Origins’: The source of the information
MANA - ‘The Authority’ of the information
WHAKAPAPA - ‘The Background’ of the information
MĀRAMATANGA - ‘The Content’ and usability of the
information
ARONGA - ‘The Lens’ or objectivity of the information

Tutorial link

Work through this tutorial to develop your skills in evaluating information that you find online:

SIFT - Evaluating Information Tutorial

Even though the library databases are good sources of information, we still need to evaluate that information before we decide to use it. You can do this by asking the following questions:

Is the information relevant to your topic?
Who are the authors, are they experts in the field? Who do they work for? What else have they written?
What evidence is given, what references are given, and what methodology is used?
How is the study funded? Is there a bias?
When was the information written, is it still relevant? Has it been updated or amended in light of new evidence?

How to evaluate websites

Use the acronym BADURL to help you evaluate online sources:
B ... Bias
A ... Authority
D ... Date
U ... URL
R ... Relevance
L ... Links

Work through this tutorial to develop your skills in evaluating information that you find online:

What the CRAPP Tutorial

Or apply these terms to assess if the information you have found answers your research question.

Currency

Reliability

Authority

Purpose/Point of view

What's new?

Nature Food is a monthly online journal publishing top-tier original research, reviews, comments and opinions on the theme of food, crossing the disciplines of food-related research in the natural, applied and social sciences.

You can now access the full text of articles from this journal via Library Search | Ketu.

For more information about this journal, click here to go to the publisher's website.

Featured Publication

Food New Zealand
Food New Zealand is the official magazine of the New Zealand Institute of Food Science & Technology Inc.

Featured open access resource

Elsevier’s parent company, RELX, has launched a curated collection of 50 book chapters and journal articles to support research into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) marking Earth Day’s 50^th anniversary. This open access special issue is devoted to sustainability, and covers a range of topics, including; energy, food science, transportation and waste.

Finding full text

'Article Link' helps you access full-text research articles in databases that the University of Otago Library subscribes to, and in Google Scholar (when you access it via the library website).

You may see Article Link represented as:

or Article Link

If we don't hold it in our library, we can usually get it for you!

Borrow books and get copies of articles, from other libraries, via our free interloans service.

Look for the 'Interloan' button at the bottom of the search results screen in Library Search | Ketu:

For help, check out the interloans webpage.

Use the links in Library Search | Ketu to both request an interloan, and to report issues with electronic access:

'Report an issue with this title' is a way to report issues with electronic access, or you can email the e-resources team.

An RSS feed reader (aka a news aggregator) is an automated way to keep up-to-date with new information posted online, including news sites, blogs, podcasts, and other media channels.

To use, sign-up to a feed reader (some popular ones are listed below), and then search for content within your reader to subscribe/add it to your feed. Alternatively, when you are on a website, look for the RSS icon to add the web address or link to your reader.