When you find an article that you like, one of the best ways to find other sources is to look through the article's reference list. Most commonly, this section is either called "Literature Cited" or "References". When you are looking through the list of references (or reference citations), how do you know what is a journal article and what is a book? Let's use the following reference citations, taken from an article in Journal of Ecology, as an example.
Baskin, C. C., and J. M. Baskin. 2004. Seeds: ecology, biogeography, and evolution of dormancy and germination. Third edition. Academic Press. San Diego, California, USA.
Pheloung, P. C., P. A. Williams, and S. R. Halloy. 1999. A weed risk assessment model for use as a biosecurity tool evaluating plant introductions. Journal of Environmental Management 57:239-251.
Rejmánek, M. 2001. Invasiveness. Pages 379-385 in D. Simberloff and M. Rejmanek, editors. Encyclopedia of biological invasions. University of California Press, Berkeley, California, USA.
Journal articles
Let's start with the journal article. You should be able to pick out the second reference as a journal article (the journal's title is Journal of Environmental Management!). But, what if the reference mentioned Oikos, People and Nature, Theoretical Ecology, or Web Ecology instead? Unless you are familiar with these journals, how would you know they are journals? The key is to look at the end of the citation. For journal articles, you will see a volume number and page numbers. In the example above, 57 is the volume number for that article and 239-251 are the page. Sometimes, though, you will see a reference citation that includes a volume number, an issue number, and page numbers. For example 32(8):1167-84 indicates that the article is in volume 32 and issue number 8, and is on pages 1167 to 1184 of that journal.
Books
A reference to a book will always have a publisher and the city of the publisher. In the first reference citation above, the publisher is Academic Press, which is located in San Diego, California. The third reference citation above is also a book: it was published by the University of California Press, which is in Berkeley, California. Note that not all publishers have "Press" in their names. Springer is a good example.
Chapters or articles from books
Sometimes, an author will cite only a chapter or a paper from a book, not the entire book. The third reference above is an example of this. The article is "Invasiveness" and this article can be found in the book "Encyclopedia of Biological Invasions". Notice that with an article or a paper from a book, that page numbers are listed (in this case 379 to 385. But, the key is that a publisher is listed, not a volume number.
Summary
Journal articles: Look through the citation for a volume number and page numbers.
Books: Look for a publisher. Page numbers might be present if the author is only using a chapter or a paper in the book.
