Articles from magazines, journals, and other periodicals are an important part of academic research. Depending on your topic and your assignment, you will need to choose the most appropriate research databases to find information sources for your research needs. This guide will help you identify good research tools for beginning researchers.
General article indexes are broad research tools, encompassing multiple types of resources and multiple areas and disciplines of study. General databases may include general readership periodicals, scholarly journals, and/or news sources in their collections. Because of their wide scope, general databases are often the preferred starting point for student research queries.
Academic Search Complete offers an enormous collection of the most valuable full-text journals, providing users access to critical information from many sources unique to this database. In addition, this database is the leading source of peer-reviewed, full-text for STM research, as well as for the Social Sciences and Humanities. This scholarly collection offers unmatched coverage of information spanning a broad range of important areas of academic study, including anthropology, engineering, law, sciences and more.
The SciTech Collection combines a number of our specialized natural science, technology, and engineering databases into one economical package combining full-text access with comprehensive discovery through extensive abstracts managed by expert editorial teams.
The most comprehensive collection of full-text and abstracting and indexing (A&I) social sciences products available on the market today. To simplify the interdisciplinary search and discovery experience, users are offered a single start point to a wealth of content.
Like general research databases, subject-specific databases encompass a broad array of different types of information sources. Unlike a general database, though, the information in a subject database is focused on a particular discipline. Subject databases are helpful for finding information on topics within a field.
CINAHL Complete is the world’s most comprehensive source of full-text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 1,300 journals indexed in CINAHL. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index, with no embargo. CINAHL Complete is the definitive research tool for all areas of nursing & allied health literature and supports nursing and allied health professionals, students, educators and researchers.
Communication & Mass Media Complete provides the most robust, quality research solution in areas related to communication and mass media. CMMC incorporates the content of CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State) along with numerous other journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study to create a research and reference resource of unprecedented scope and depth encompassing the breadth of the communication discipline. CMMC offers cover-to-cover (“core”) indexing and abstracts for more than 570 journals, and selected (“priority”) coverage of nearly 200 more, for a combined coverage of more than 770 titles. Furthermore, this database includes full text for over 450 journals.
Scholarly journals, also known as peer-reviewed or academic journals, represent the foundation of academic discourse and scholarship. Written by experts in a field for experts in a field, articles in scholarly journals are subject to a vigorous pre-publication process known as peer-review to help ensure that the articles presented are of high quality. Scholarly journals are often the preferred sources for academic work.
A comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal content from Sage Publishing.
News sources capture current happenings and events at the local, domestic, and international levels. News sources are updated frequently, sometimes even multiple times per day. While news articles tend to be brief, news articles are an excellent source for research on contemporary issues, current controversies, and evolving issues. Newspapers also provide valuable historical insight on key events and individuals active on local, national, and international stages. The moon landing, the Cuban Missile Crisis, 9/11, and more can all be explored through historical newspaper articles.
Access West Virginia provides direct access to 25+ of Newsbank's WV titles under one searchable link. Used for industry and economic info, company information, legislation, common core education standards, local history research and much more.
This comprehensive news collection is ideal for exploring issues and events at the local, regional, national and international level. Its diverse source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Use it to explore a specific event or to compare a wide variety of viewpoints on topics such as politics, business, health, sports, cultural activities and people. Content is easily searched and sorted through an intuitive, map-based interface.
News, legal information, business and company profiles, biographies, and consumer information. Across the globe, LexisNexis provides customers with access to billions of searchable documents and records from more than 45,000 legal, news and business sources in the following areas: legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting, and academic markets.
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