Biosciences and Chemistry

Here are a range of Biosciences and Chemistry tutorials that will help you with a range of assignments.

How do you solve a problem like researching for assignments! 

• This guide is aimed at foundation year students and first year undergraduates. It will also be useful to MSc students in the first few months at university.

How to find information for science or health-based literature reviews

• The guide will show you how to find information for literature review within Health and the Life Sciences. The guide is aimed at undergraduate students in their final year and MSc students studying within the Departments of Biosciences and Chemistry, Allied Health Professions and Nursing.

How to keep up to date with your subject using journals

• It is important to keep up to date with published material in your subject otherwise your knowledge becomes out of date. You can prevent this by keeping up to date with literature by regularly reading articles in academic journals! 

Ten top tips for scientific writing

• This guide outlines ten top tips for science essay writing at an undergraduate level of study and will help you improve your scientific writing.

A selection of books to help develop your science writing

At university, you will be asked to complete a range of assignments. A common thread between your assignments is the information you use to guide how you answer your assigned question. You need to use high quality and relevant information and this section can help you make sure you that this is what you find. 

This guide is here to help you do this! 

This guide is aimed at foundation year students, first year undergraduates or MSc students returning from a break in study.  

This guide represents between one and two hours of study time.

The study time given does vary to factor in the range of pre existing expertise and knowledge about how library resources work and how search techniques can be used in your search for information at university.  Some tasks may take longer than others and if you read all the resources that are linked to from the guide and the journal articles, then the study time may be longer.

The guide will show you how to find information for literature review within Health and Biosciences.

Is this the guide for me?

The guide is aimed at undergraduate students in their final year and MSc students studying within the Departments of Biosciences and Chemistry, Allied Health Professions and Nursing.

Read before using this guide!  

• The College of Health, Wellbeing and Life Sciences includes a range of subject disciplines and this guide is broad in focus which means it may not cover something that is unique to your department or subject area. 
• If you are from another department, we would encourage you check with your teaching team before following any guidance here about literature searching.
• If you have any doubts or questions about your literature review and any advice provided here... check with the person that set your assignment!
• The guidance here does not replace any assignment specific requirements and you should always thoroughly read and understand what is required for your assignment before you begin writing.

This guide represents between one and two hours of study time.

It is important to keep up to date with published material in your subject otherwise your knowledge becomes out of date.

You can prevent this by regularly reading articles in academic journals. If you are unsure which journals publish articles in your subject, then use Browse eJournals.

You can use Browse eJournals to browse by subject area e.g. chemistry to find journals within your field and then view the table of contents for a journal issue and then go to the full text of the article.

Here are a range of high quality academic journals relevant to the study of Biosciences and Chemistry. Take a look and try reading an article of interest.

If you are new to reading academic articles, then start with New Scientist, Nature or the Annual Review collection.

This guide outlines ten top tips for science essay writing at an undergraduate level of study and will help you improve your scientific writing.

The guidance here does not replace any assignment specific requirements and you should always thoroughly read and understand what is required for your assignment before you begin writing.

This guide represents around thirty minutes to one hour of study time.