ENGL 101/102

What kind of research has been done on your topic? Where can you find original research articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals? 

Use this page to learn about sources for finding peer reviewed original research articles. Also, learn about the nature and characteristics of peer reviewed and original research articles.

Best Bets -- Library Databases

Identify Keywords

Once you have narrowed your topic, try to identify the most important ideas. These ideas are your keywords, and will help you search for sources more effectively.

Example topic: How does social media impact the mental health of teenagers in the United States?
Keywords: social media, mental health, teenagers, and United States

Brainstorm Synonyms

Most words have multiple synonyms, try to come up with at least one for each identified keyword. If you are having trouble finding sources, synonyms can help you broaden your search to include more commonly used words within the research.

Keyword: teenagers
Synonyms: adolescents, young adults, high schooler/middle schooler

Use Search Tools or Filters

Most library databases have search tools, or filters, built in. Filters allow you to quickly limit your results so you can find relevant sources. Try some of these filters:

• Subject: Subjects can be helpful when are viewing an argument through a disciplinary lens or you want to find information in a certain field.
• Date range: Allows you to find research published within a certain timeframe.
• Peer reviewed: Ensures that the results you see are peer reviewed. This takes out some of the guesswork when you have a limited timeframe.
• Full text: This filter means that the full text is available through your institution so you can access it immediately. (However, if the full text is not available, fear not, you can still get access through Interlibrary Loan)

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators are conjunction words used to navigate databases. They connect search terms to find the sources you need -- or omit the ones you don't need!

When you search databases, you do not enter full sentences. You use boolean operators to connect your searched words!

Do you have too many results?

Use the search operator AND to only find sources that mention both keywords. A basic search string would connect all of your keywords with the AND operator. This search will bring back fewer results than searching either keyword on its own.

Example: "social media" AND teenagers

Do you have too few results?

Use the search operator OR to expand your search with additional keywords. This is a great place to use the synonyms we identified earlier. This search will find sources that include either word so you will get more results than if you searched with just one keyword.

Example: (teenagers OR adolescents OR "young adults")
*Note: For best results enclose OR statements in parentheses.

Are you getting the wrong results?

Use the search operator NOT to remove undesired results.

Example: "social media" AND teenagers NOT "video games"

Quotations

Quotation marks are also commonly used when searching databases. Place quotation marks around phrases to search sources for a specific term that contains more than one word. This is important to remember, because if you do not do this you will find a plethora of sources that contain the individual words from your search term, but not the term itself.

Example: 
"Civil War" will provide you with sources that contain the specific term, "Civil War".
Civil War, in contrast, will provide you with sources that contain "Civil War," but will also show you everything that also has "civil" and "war" in its work.

Truncation

Truncation (symbolized with *, an asterisk) is used to find search terms that may have the same root word, but different endings.

Examples:
immuni* = immunity, immunization, immunizations
hum* = human, hummmus, humor
teen* = teen, teens, teenager, teenage
technolog* = technology, technologies, technological