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IACUC, Animal Welfare, Literature Reviews

Find information to help search for alternatives (aka the "3Rs") mandated by the Animal Welfare Act and required for IACUC protocols (Breeding, section 6; Research, section 7; Instruction, section 2g) for Virginia Tech. Use the tabs below to jump to any s

A few tips to use when searching

Use Boolean Operators in your search statements:

  • AND (combine distinct concepts to narrow)
    • canine AND restraint
  • OR (expand by finding synonyms to each concept)
    • pig OR piglet OR swine OR porcine
  • NOT (exclude terms)
    • pig NOT guinea

Use Quotation marks to search for phrases

  • "social housing"
  • "magnetic resonance imaging"

Use "wild cards" for truncation (check the "help" section of a database to find out what symbols/wild cards are supported for various functionalities).

  • * usually expands the root of a word
    • handl*
      • handle, handler, handling, ...
  • ? or ! usually replaces 0 to 1 characters in a word
    • wom?n
      • woman, women
    • colo!r
      • color, colour

Use parentheses to indicate order of operations in your searches:

  • Correct:
    • (rabbit* OR lagamorph*) AND ("social housing" OR "group housing" OR "enriched cag*")
  • Incorrect:
    • rabbit* OR lagamorph* AND "social housing" OR "group housing" OR "enriched cag*"