Professors are usually very specific about the kind of articles they will accept in research paper bibliographies. Not all articles, particularly those found using Google, are considered to be appropriate.
There are 2 ways to look for articles:
- If you have a reference/citation.
- If you have a topic.
Citations come from footnotes or bibliographies that you find in textbooks, assigned readings, or in your research. A typical citation will have the following elements, although the order in which they appear can vary:
- author's name
- title of the article
- title of the journal or magazine
- volume /issue of the journal
- page numbers of the article
- publication date
Since each issue of a journal contains several articles, the citation gives you all the information you need to find a particular article within the journal.
Here's a sample citation:
Null, Roberta."Student perceptions of the social and academic climates of suite living arrangements." The Journal of College and University Student Housing, v11, n1, 1981 35-42.
- Author = Null, Roberta
- Article Title = "Student perceptions of the social and academic climates of suite living arrangements."
- Journal Title = The Journal of College and University Student Housing
- Volume/Issue = Volume 11, Number 1
- Page numbers = 35-42
- Date = 1981
Your next step is to check if the journal is available in the Libraries.
If you have a citation, your next step is to search BISON, the University of Manitoba Libraries Catalogue, for the journal. Article titles don't appear in BISON, but journal titles do.
If the journal is listed in BISON, you will then use the rest of your citation information to locate the particular issue and specific article that you need, either online or by going to the stacks where hard copies of journals are shelved.
Sample citation:
Null, Roberta."Student perceptions of the social and academic climates of suite living arrangements" The Journal of College and University Student Housing, v11, n1, 1981.
You would search BISON for The Journal of College and University Student Housing, not "Student perceptions of the social and academic climates of suite living arrangements."
Use the tutorial or guide below to learn more about finding journals:
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To search for articles on a topic you will use the Libraries' ELibrary system, which links to all of the Libraries' electonic collections.
Within ELibrary, you will search periodical databases to find articles by topic.
Periodical databases are essentially collections of individual articles, or article citations, within thousands of journals. Databases usually concentrate on specific subject areas, and can sometimes be organized into even larger groupings of related subjects.
Within databases, references to articles can appear as citations, abstracts, or fulltext. As we've already seen, citations give you the minimum information needed to locate an article within a specific journal.
An abstract is a summary of an article, which can help you decide if the article will be useful or relevant to you.
Fulltext means that the complete article can be found in the database. Fulltext articles can appear as PDF scans, which look like a printed article, or as HTML, which looks like a web page. HTML articles usually don't have graphics or other images, which might be found in a paper or PDF copy of the article. They also usually don't have page numbers, which could affect how you cite the article in your paper.
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ELibrary contains hundreds of databases, which are organized by large subject areas, like Art, Medicine, and Science. For ARTS 1110, there are two databases which are useful for your research:
- Academic Search Elite
- ERIC
Academic Search Elite offers full text for over 2,000 scholarly journals, including nearly 1,500 peer-reviewed titles. This multi-disciplinary database covers virtually every area of academic study. More than 100 journals have PDF images back to 1985. This database is updated on a daily basis via EBSCOhost.
ERIC is a database of materials about education, including journal articles, books and research reports. ERIC is a useful database for topics that deal with student adjustment to university, student success at university, the psychology of learning, and similar topics.
Each database is structured differently from the other, but basic searching principles apply to both.
BOth ERIC and Academic Search Elite are searchable by keyword, like Google. However, they operate differently from Google, and the information found in them is more specialized. Because of this, it's a good idea to plan your search ahead of time. This plan will help you to identify keywords or specialized terms, keeps your searching focused, and helps you to assess the usefulness of the articles that you find. It will also give you the flexibility to change your search if the results aren't what you expected.
For example, if your thesis statement is: "Living in residence has a postive effect on student grades", you would break it down into the main concepts or keywords:
- residence
- effect
- student
- grades
You should also think of alternate terms/keywords. For example: "residence" could also be referred to as dorms or dormitories or student housing. "Success" or "marks" might be another way to describe grades. American articles tend describe "college" while Canadian or British ones will refer to "university".
There could be other variables that will influence your search. For example:
- Do you need current or older information?
- Do you want studies from the U.S. and Canada only?
- Are you interested in first year students or more senior years?
- Does the age or gender of the students make a difference?
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Your instructors will want you to use academic or scholarly articles when you research your papers. They may also ask you to find peer-reviewed or refereed journals or articles. How can you identify them?
There are essentially 3 types of articles: Popular, Trade and Academic/Scholarly.
Popular literature usually refers to magazines and newspapers. Examples are: People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Winnipeg Sun, CNN, MSNBC. Magazine or newspaper articles aren't usually considered to be appropriate for university assignments, because they're not based on academic research. Instead they're aimed at a general reading audience, to entertain or inform. They also have a commercial focus.Trade journals are written for practitioners in a specific field. Articles from trade journals may be acceptable for papers in some courses, particularly in applied disciplines. (e.g. business, engineering, architecture). This is because the articles are often about real-world practices and experiences, written by experts in the field. They share some characteristics, with academic articles like specialized vocabulary and bibliographies, but are not considered to be fully academic.
Academic/scholarly journals have some similarities to magazines and trade journals, since they're also published on a regular basis and contain articles based on a theme, but there are also major differences. Journals:
- publish new research in a specific field or discipline
- inform scholars and researchers
- use very specialized or technical vocabulary and terms
- contain bibliographies or footnotes.
Many journals are "peer-reviewed" which means that before articles can be published, they're reviewed by other experts to confirm that the research is valid. Peer-reviewed journals are considered to be the most reliable form of academic writing. Most academic journals can't be found in Google, and even Google Scholar has limitations.
The following resources will give you more information on the differences between academic journals and other types of articles:
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