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Copy of ENGL1102-BHarris: Journal Articles

Why Use Journals?

Why and When Should I use Journal Articles?

Often an assignment will call for Journal Articles, or your professor will state, "I want to see some scholarly/peer reviewed articles in your bibliography". Journals, in particular Scholarly/Peer Reviewed Journals, are where you can find published research. This information is generally more current than Books, because each Journal is published multiple times a year as a separate issue. This means the turn around time is much faster than with books. You can find Journal Articles by searching the Discover Search Box on the library's home page, or on this guide. Be sure to remember to click on the Scholarly/Peer Reviewed limiting facet if that is a requirement for your assignment. Ask a Librarian to help you if you don't remember what that is!

Discover

Discover Search

Discover is a great tool 

  • for beginning and novice researchers
  • you are just getting started and want to explore a topic
  • unsure the direction or more specific topic you want to research
  • want to know which databases hold content on your topic
  • want to know which journals publish content on your topic

Once you have some research perimeters set, it is advisable to leave Discover and conduct your search in one of the Discipline Specific Databases, or Subject Databases. Your results will be much more targeted, PLUS you gain some useful analytics to help you strengthen your research even more.

Advanced Search  •  Help

Developing A Search Querie from a Research Question

Examples

Bitmoji Image with text Breaking it Down     Developing Your Search Query

By now you should have read through these tips on pulling and locating possible search terms. Remember, also, that your terms can come from your topic provided your professor. 

But how do you actually use these Operators AND and OR?

Here is a simple example of how this actually works:

 

bitmoji image with text Snack Attack

 Let's say you are doing research on the following topic:  Why is salty and sweet such a desired snack combination?

Now let's decide which keywords are the most important and provide at least two synonyms for each.

Salty:Salinity, Briny, Sodium    Sweet:Sugary, Saccharine     Desired:Wanted, Sought, Craved   

 

Now that I have my keywords from my research question and some synonyms, I can begin making sets of possible search queries.

Salty AND Sweet AND Desired

(Salty OR Salinity) AND (Sweet OR Sugary) AND (desired OR craved)

There are other combinations that may work for this research question, but hopefully, you get the picture. 

Remember, OR is going to expand your results. It is great for the following situations:

  • To retrieve all members of an entire class of items - be sure to include the name of the class!  Citrus OR Oranges OR Lemons OR Tangerines OR Grapefruit.
  • Search both the acronym or initialism and the full name:  HPLC OR high-performance liquid chromatography
  • Search both Common and Scientific Names: Poison Oak OR Toxicodendron diversilobum
  • Search similar concepts *like we did above!   Salty OR Salinity
  • And sometimes you can actually use acronyms to fully express your concept:  dehydration OR hydration,   fertility OR sterility

AND will narrow your results! 

Salty AND Sweet:  The database will pull items that only deal with both of these in the same source! 

Developing Your Search Strategy

Developing an Effective Search Strategy Involves: 

  • Identifyng the key search concepts

  • Identifying related terms to the key search concepts

  • Using standard search structures to broaden and narrow your search results

While there is not ONE right way to do a search, the strategies identified on this page will improve your results!

Search Techniques: Boolean Operators

Limiting and Expanding Your Search Using And, Or, Not...

Boolean searching involves adding or subtracting terms to your search to either broaden or narrow your search. It uses three terms (AND, OR, NOT) to tell the search engine or database whether to include or eliminate certain terms.                                  

 

                                                                                                                                                                            

AND/OR The Difference

Remember, OR is going to expand your results. It is great for the following situations:

  • To retrieve all members of an entire class of items - be sure to include the name of the class!  Citrus OR Oranges OR Lemons OR Tangerines OR Grapefruit.
  • Search both the acronym or initialism and the full name:  HPLC OR high-performance liquid chromatography
  • Search both Common and Scientific Names: Poison Oak OR Toxicodendron diversilobum
  • Search similar concepts *like we did above!   Salty OR Salinity
  • And sometimes you can actually use acronyms to fully express your concept:  dehydration OR hydration,   fertility OR sterility

AND will narrow your results! 

Salty AND Sweet:  The database will pull items that only deal with both of these in the same source! 

Search Techniques: Quotation Marks

Using Quotation Marks in Your Search:

Quotation Marks can be used to identify Phrases.

By using quotations marks, you can tell the computer to only bring back pages with the terms you typed in the exact order you typed them.

"skin cancer"

Instead of 

skin AND cancer

"literary criticism"

Instead of 

literary AND criticism

 

 

Search Techniques: Truncation

Using Truncation in your Search:

Truncation allows you to search various forms of a word by finding alternative endings.

The character (*) is placed at the end of the first few letters of a search term or at the end of its root.

Litera*

Retrieves Literature, Literary, Literata