Because Science Reference Center is a broad audience science database, meant to serve high schoolers as well as college users, it is sometimes too basic. That is, it does not have the same depth of coverage as a good University-oriented database like Academic Search Complete. Nor does it provide the kind of specialized science journals that you might find in a subject-specific academic database like BioOne. Science majors doing advanced topics will find these higher level databases to be a better option for their research.
However, sometimes a student in anything from an English to a Communications to a Sociology class might need to get quick access to an assortment of good articles on a science or medical subject without sorting through the multi-subject false drops in a general academic database, or pulling up the more esoteric and overly-scholarly articles in a higher-level science database. These students will be well served by Science Reference Center.
For example, if I do a search for breast cancer, I get a variety of results:
These include good basic news journals like "Science News," but also recognizable academic journals like the "American Journal of Public Health"--both available full-text. And because this is an Ebsco database, there are familiar functions like narrowing by subject heading (in the left frame), or limiting to peer-reviewed journals from the opening search screen check-box.
I you need just a few quick articles on a topic related to medicine or the sciences, Science Reference Center can be a useful tool.
[FIND Science Reference Center on our "Databases by Subject" List in the "Sciences" category.]
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