Articles are published in periodicals -- JOURNALS, MAGAZINES, and NEWSPAPERS. To find articles on a topic, search the Michael Schwartz Library's Research Databases.

Research Databases contain citations or references to articles published in various journals, magazines, and newspapers. Research Databases also contain the full text of many articles, either in HTML or PDF format. You can read the articles online, print them out, email them, or save them to your USB. The Library pays to provide access to these Research Databases -- they are not free!

For academic research, you should include articles from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. These journals are sometimes called refereed journals. In the peer review process, an article is reviewed by experts before it is accepted for publication in a scholarly journal. Most Research Databases will allow you to LIMIT your results to peer-reviewed journals when searching.

Research studies are published in academic journals, but not every article in an academic journal will be a research study.

Open the article. Read the Abstract, which is a short summary of the article. Scroll through the article and review the sections/headings.

A research study will have a METHODS, METHODOLOGY, or RESEARCH DESIGN section that describes participants and how they were selected, as well as how data for the study were collected.

Start your search for articles in these Core Education Research Databases. Please note that you have access to two versions of the ERIC database.

Develop a list of keywords/search terms for your research topic/question. Include synonyms and related terms. Search on different keywords and combinations of terms to find information. Use the Boolean operators AND, OR to combine search terms. For example:

reading AND motivation AND middle school

academic achievement OR student performance

social media AND anxiety AND high school

academic achievement AND (cellphones OR mobile phones OR smartphones)

Apply limiters to narrow your search results. For example:

• Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals
• Published Date
• Source Type
• Geography