Writing a Research Paper

Step 5: Collection - Once you have narrowed your research focus, it is time to start collecting research that supports your thesis.  The most current research can be found in academic journal articles.  You can search for journal articles in library databases. All subject and class LibGuides have a tab listing the best databases to search in a given academic discipline.  These tabs are usually labelled "Finding Articles" or "Databases".

The Finding Articles Tab on the History LibGuide provides you with an annotated list of, and links to, databases we use most frequently for history. Many of these, such as JSTOR, Project Muse, and Academic Search Complete, in particular, are excellent resources for finding scholarly journal articles about history.

 You should employ the same strategies searching databases as you do when searching catalogs:

• Use short, succinct search terms.
• Be flexible. If you're not satisfied with your results, try different, but analogous, terms.
• Pay attention to what you are searching - for keywords or the full text of an article.

In the example below, I am looking for articles that deal with the Spanish Flu in the United States using the database Academic Search Complete.

 

Please note the following:

Figure 1: Shows my search terms. I separate each search term with the word 'AND', indicating to the database that my search results must include both of my search terms.

Figure 2: Shows text indicating what type of source the item is. The first item is a peer-reviewed journal article, while the second is labeled 'Periodical'.  

Figure 3: Indicates the 'Access Options' drop-down menu.  Click this icon to discover if the item is available in full-text. If so, you will see a link to a PDF or HTML document. In some cases you might see a link to "linked full text" which will provide you will the full text of the article in another library database.

Figure 4: Indicates the 'All Filters' button that allows you to refine your search in a variety of ways such as source type, date published and by subject. 

Keyword vs. Full Text Searching

When you are doing a more involved search, with multiple search terms, you might sometimes be frustrated by finding few, if any results. In the image below, you can see that I found only two results when I searched for the terms "Spanish flu", "united states", "covid-19" and "contact tracing"

However, If I change what I am searching, I can improve my chances of getting relevant results. If I select Advanced Search (top-right of the screen), you'll see that next to boxes for the search terms is series of second boxes with a drop down arrow. In the image below that box reads "All fields". That is the default search setting and will search for your terms in all fields of the record - such as subject terms, words in the title, etc. It WILL NOT search the entire text of an article.

If you retrieve few results, you might want to consider doing an all text search. To do so, just click on the drop down arrow and select "All Text - TX" as shown in the fields below.

In the image below, you will see that when I changed to an all-text search I retrieved 14 results as opposed to two with a keyword search.

An Article's Bibliographic Record

When you look at an individual article's record (click on the article's title from the list of search results), there are several things you should look at as noted in the image below.

Figure 1.Shows a menu of icons. Click the quotation mark (") icon to create a database-generated citation for the article.  To generate a permanent link to the article's detailed record, click the Share icon, which looks like an arrow.  The final icon in the meu will allow you to download a PDF copy of the article to your computer.

Figure 2. Points to the start of the bibliographic information for this article. Included here are the authors names, the publishing journal, and the date of publication.
 

Figure 3. Scroll down the page to find additional bibliographic information such as the volume number, issue number, and pages. This is the information you will need to write your citation.

Figure 4: Shows the subject terms associated with this record. Subject terms can help you refine your search by using the same terminology as the database.

Figure 5: Shows the abstract. The abstract provides you with a brief synopsis of the article. When reviewing a large results set, abstracts are a time saver, allowing you to quickly disregard items that aren't helpful or relevant.