Finding Articles
If you're looking only for articles--including scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles--use the dropdown menu beside the main search box to select "Articles."
Enter a few important subject-related keywords in the search box and hit the "Search" button.
You can narrow your results even further on your search results screen. If you're only interested in articles from Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed journals, look for the "Limit To" panel and click the box that says "Scholarly Sources." Your results list will be updated to weed out non-scholarly sources.
General Databases
A database is an online collection of articles that you can search by topic or keyword. Databases are great sources for articles because much of the material in library databases is the high quality, scholarly research material that most professors want. Most of our databases offer links to the full text of articles. If you know the name of the database you want to search, start at the Databases A-Z list.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowCovering most areas of academic study, this scholarly, multi-disciplinary database contains more than 6,100 full-text periodicals and offers access to monographs, reports, conference proceedings and much more.
- MasterFILE Premier This link opens in a new windowMultidisciplinary database provides full text for more than 1,700 general reference publications with full text information dating as far back as 1975. Also includes nearly 500 full text reference books, 84,774 biographies, 100,554 primary source documents, and an Image Collection of 202,164 photos, maps and flags.
- eBooks (Gale Virtual Reference Library) This link opens in a new windowGale Virtual Reference Library is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.
- Social Sciences Full Text This link opens in a new windowFull text and citations/abstracts. Full-text articles from more than 330 journals; content dating as far back as 1972. High-quality indexing for nearly 750 periodicals, over 670 of which are peer-reviewed. - [EBSCOhost]
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window• Biological Sciences Collection: 29 journals with more than 130 titles that span the sciences. Subjects include ecology and evolutionary biology, plant and animal sciences, paleontology, and conservation.
• Business Collection: Subjects include economics and finance, accounting, labor relations, marketing, management, operations research, and risk assessment.
• Arts and Sciences III Collection: Language & Literature, Music, Film Studies, Folklore, Performing Arts, Religion, Art & Art History, Architecture & Architectural History
• And more! - Humanities Source This link opens in a new windowFull text and citations/abstracts. Peer-reviewed journals and popular sources in the humanities pertaining to literary, scholarly and creative thought.
What is a scholarly source?
Instructors often ask students to find “scholarly”, “academic”, or “peer reviewed” sources of information for their research. These terms all refer to the same type of information – sources based on in-depth research, and are considered higher in quality and more reliable for your research.
These sources can range from chapters within books or entire books, or journal articles, but all have common characteristics that can help you recognize that type of information.
- Produced by experts or researchers in a specialized field or discipline.
- Purpose is to present new or unpublished research.
- Articles reviewed by experts for scholarly content or quality, or peer reviewed
- Written using formal language and structure: abstract, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion, possibly footnotes, endnotes and/or bibliography.
- May include tables or graphs to support research.
Database Search Tips
- Select Scholarly Sources to limit you search to only articles published in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals.
- Select Full-Text to see only articles you can read immediately.
- If the full text of an article isn't available, you can request it for free through InterLibrary Loan (ILLIAD). Articles usually take 24-48 hours to arrive, and are sent to you by email.
- When you have found an article that is close to what you are looking for, look at the subject headings. Try searching these terms to find relevant articles.
- Look at the references/citations at the end of an article to find more articles on your topic.