ENGL 127 Research Writing: Social Sciences (Frye)

Find your Scholarly Conversation in Library Databases

Search for scholarly articles

Use a library periodicals database and the library One Search to find the scholarly conversation and articles for your annotated bibliography and literature review. Tips:

  • To find just scholarship, limit to peer-reviewed or scholarly journal articles only. By the way, be sure to still assess if it's a scholarly article! Scholarly journals contain book reviews (of new works in that field) and even commentary (an editorial on a current issue in that field). 
  • To find the most relevant articles, you will need to consider many more. Try multiple keywords and subject terms, and search different databases.
To find relevant scholarly articles: 
  • For scholarly articles limit your search to scholarly and/or peer reviewed journals. (In JSTOR just check the box next to Articles to omit reviews!) Much of the content in Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is scholarly. 
  • Use the Advanced Search feature to combine Keywords or use Subject Terms to find more relevant search results.
  • Set an appropriate date limit.
  • Click on an article title for the abstract to decide if you should read the whole thing.
  • I suggest leaving "full text" unchecked. It's helpful to learn about relevant sources, even if you have to track them down elsewhere!

Here's a screenshot from the ProQuest database that illustrates what I mean:

Searching by Subject Terms

Use Subject Terms instead of keywords to find the most relevant articles on a topic.

If you can't figure out what keyword will find you articles on your topic, select Subject Terms (in Academic Search Complete) or the Thesaurus (in ProQuest and browse for the Subject Term used by the database. 

  • Example: Instead of the common expression "blended families," Academic Search Complete uses the Subject Term: STEPFAMILIES.

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subject search showing alternative terms listed in text above image


The Subject Terms list can also help you identify key subtopics, as in the example below. 

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search pointing out the subject terms option on the top menu

Be a Power Researcher

Full Text

ProQuest, Academic Search Complete, and other research databases include article abstracts and citation information without full text. This is useful to you as a researcher!

You may check the filter for Full Text only results (usually at the top or to the side of the results), but if you leave it unchecked, you will learn about highly relevant articles that you can track down elsewhere, whether in another GRC database or in WorldCat.

You can borrow articles we do not have in full text for free through Interlibrary Loan.

The image below shows results from a sample search.
  • The first featured result shows the access to the full-text, PDF of the article. 
  • The second featured result shows the option to "check for full-text at GRC" - which will either take you to the article housed in another database, or it will connect you to the record where you can then request an interlibrary loan. 
(Click on image to enlarge)

This screenshot shows a list of search results, highlighting the "Access options" that allow you to a) click on the full-text PDF option, or b) to click "Check for Full-Text at GRC"

Again, the second option shown in the image above allows you to "check for full-text at GRC" and will either connect you to the full-text PDF of the article in another database, or it will take you to a page that looks like the image below, a record in Primo OneSearch. 

  • This is the page you will see if the library doesn't have the PDF. Click on the InterLibrary Loan link to borrow the article from another library. Articles are generally available electronically and they will be emailed to you quickly.

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a screenshot of the record in OneSearch, showing that the article is listed as "not available" and the option to "request through interlibrary loan"


Citation "Mining"

Effective researchers "mine" or look through the references of a relevant book or article to find additional sources for their own research. This can be a productive technique!

To track down sources from a references list:  

  • Type the title of the source into search box of the library's One Search Tool.
  • Put the title in "quotes" to keep all the words together. If the title is very long, you might do best with just the first part.
  • If we have it, you'll find it easily this way. If we don't have it, you can use InterLibrary to borrow it for free.
  • If you know the title of an article you can search for that title in the main search box on the library's website as shown in the image below.

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image of a search for a title in Primo

  • In this case we had the article in Holman Library, and my search returned this result: 

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image of the results, showing the article that was searched for by title

Research Log

Use this research log to identify your research question, identify keywords and subject terms, and track the scholarly conversation on the topic.