Do you need help writing a high school or college level research paper and are not sure where to begin? Try “Academic Search Elite” [EBSCO] database. This database contains full-text articles – including peer-reviewed ones – on a broad range of subjects for more than 2,100 journals.
What’s a peer-reviewed article? When an article is peer-reviewed, it means that it has been read by experts in that particular subject. The expert examines the article for mistakes and ensures that it is of the highest quality before it goes to publication. Frequently teachers will ask that articles cited in a paper be peer-reviewed. By simply checking the peer-reviewed box before you search the database, you can examine only these types of articles.
No one has time to read thousands of articles. Learn how to narrow down your search results! For example, a keyword search for “dogs” will produce results ranging from the dates 1908 to 2012. When I searched for “dogs” it yielded 41,717 articles to be exact (at the time of writing this).
Most teachers require the most recent articles for your paper. To sort results by date, use the scrolling bar on the left side of the page. Instead of searching for results between 1908 and 2012, try searching from 2010 to 2012. You’ll find that the results are easier to examine this way!
If I want to narrow down my “dogs” search further, I can check the “full-text” tab, the “peer-reviewed” tab, and narrow the dates between 2010 and 2012. Now instead of 40,000+ articles, I have a much more manageable 500+ articles. Let’s take it one step further and narrow it by type of dog. Try using the same search criteria as above and typing dogs AND poodle. You receive 6 results. That’s a lot easier to read than 40,000!
--Connie D., Rock Road Branch
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