Articles provide:

• Breaking news
• Current, up-to-date information
• Narrow focus on one aspect of a topic
• Original research
• Bibliography of additional sources

When you want to use the research databases or electronic book collections from an off-campus location, you will be asked to: 

1. Enter your name
2. Enter your CSU student number
3. Enter your Library PIN

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) provides free access to full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, covering all subjects and many languages.

Before purchasing an article you findon the Internet, check with a librarian to see if the library has access to it at no extra charge. 

What is a Research Database?

Research databases are the online tools you should use to search for articles on your topic. These databases include information about articles that have been published in journals, magazines, and newspapers.

Some research databases even provide access to book reviews, film reviews, dramas, financial reports, and many other sources of information.

Many of the articles listed in the databases are available in full-text format. Full-text means the entire text of the article is available online. You can read, print, or email the article directly from the computer.

From Ohio Dominican University

Recommended Databases for ENG 102:

Not all articles are created equal. There are specific qualities that distinguish articles published in popular magazines and newspapers, trade journals, and scholarly journals.  Be sure that the type of article you are using matches your professor's expectations and your research needs.

What does peer reviewed or refereed mean?

Peer Review is a process that journals use to ensure the articles they publish represent the best scholarship currently available. When an article is submitted to a peer reviewed journal, the editors send it out to other scholars in the same field (the author's peers) to get their opinion on the quality of the scholarship, its relevance to the field, its appropriateness for the journal, etc.

Publications that don't use peer review (Time, Newsweek, Salon) just rely on the judgement of the editors. That's why you can't count on them for solid, scientific scholarship.

Peer reviewed articles are also called scholarly, refereed, or juried.

Created by North Carolina State University Libraries