How to Find Articles

If you don't need to do a comprehensive search, but only require a few recent articles for your speech, paper, or project, then a good place to start is with our Top Ten Databases list.

Here you will find general article databases such as ProQuest, Ebsco Academic, and Ebsco Business. These databases have a mix of popular magazines and scholarly journals; many of the articles can be found full-text in the databases.

A good place to start is ProQuest, Ebsco Academic, and Ebsco Business. These databases index a mix of popular magazines and scholarly journals; many articles can be found full-text in the databases.

In all these databases, you can limit your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed journals. If you choose the scholarly limit, your will omit articles from more popular magazines such as Time or Newsweek.

Once you have input a search and have a list of articles, you may also have the option to limit your results to show only popular, trade, or academic publications.

Need help distinguishing a peer-reviewed journal from a popular or trade publication? View our video tutorial or our tip sheet on peer-reviewed journals.

You can also look up a journal in the UlrichsWeb Periodicals Directory to determine if articles are refereed (peer-reviewed or scholarly) or not.

"Peer-reviewed," "scholarly," "academic,"and "refereed" are often used interchangeably to describe journals that use some kind of outside reviewing process to verify the scholarship of articles submitted for publication.

In many databases, including ProQuest, Ebsco Academic, and Ebsco Business, you can limit your search to scholarly or peer-reviewed journals. This will omit articles from more popular magazines such as Time or Newsweek.

Once you have input a search and have a list of articles, you may also have the option to limit your results to show only popular, trade, or academic publications.

Need help distinguishing a peer-reviewed journal from a popular or trade publication? View our video tutorial or our tip sheet on peer-reviewed journals.

You can also look up a journal in the UlrichsWeb Periodicals Directory to determine if articles are refereed (peer-reviewed or scholarly) or not.

If your instructor says not to use the Internet for an assignment, she usually intends that you not use a general search engine as Google or Yahoo! Search engines may turn up many relevant web sites on your topic; some may be authoritative and scholarly but some may be a class project written by third-graders.

The University Libraries subscribe to nearly 15,000 electronic journals; many of these we no longer receive in print and so are only available online. You should be able to use these electronic version of these journals for a research assignment.

The best way to identify these scholarly materials is to use our Subject Databases to find articles on your topic, rather than general search engines such as Yahoo! or Ask Jeeves.

If your assignment requires you to find some printed and some online articles, then your instructor may intend that you learn to find bound volumes of journals here in the Libraries. Even though we have many journals online, there are many older issues that are only available in print. More about finding articles in bound journals.

General databases like ProQuest and Ebsco are convenient to find a few quick articles, but they do not cover any subject area in great depth.

To conduct a more thorough search of relevant publications on your topic, use the resources recommended on our Databases by Subject lists.

If you are embarking on a major research project, you may wish to contact your subject librarian for an appointment. She can assist you in identifying the most important databases for your topic.

Most databases sort search results so that the most recent publications come first in the list. In addition, many article indexes and databases allow you to limit your search to specific date ranges.

In some databases, the most recent issues may not be available online. For instance, the most recent 12 months may not be online, due to publisher restrictions. In that instance, you will have to obtain the paper version or request the article on Interlibrary Loan.

JSTOR is an important archive of journals from many subject areas, but keep in mind that most coverage is between 3-5 years out of date. JSTOR does not usually have recent journal issues.

A number of our databases include recent newspaper articles.

Lexis Nexis Academic has hundreds of U.S. and international newspapers, in addition to broadcast transcripts and wire services. The New York Times (1980-present), Washington Post (1977-present), and Arkansas Democrat Gazette (1993-present) are all available in Lexis Nexis Academic. To search a particular newspaper, use the "Sources" list.

Ebsco Newspaper Source offers recent articles from almost 200 newspapers, including selected articles from the Daily Oklahoman and Dallas Morning News.

ProQuest includes full text of the Wall Street Journal from 1984 to the present.

For older newspaper articles, you may need to use printed indexes to identify citations to articles, then find the newspaper on microfilm or microfiche in the Periodicals Room. More about newspaper research (PDF).

Once you have a citation, you will need to find out whether or not the Libraries own the journal or magazine that it was published in.

Go to our online catalog and select journal title. Type in the name of the journal, not the title of the article.

If your citation contains an abbreviation for the journal name, try spelling the full title out in your search. Don't know what the abbreviation stands for? Ask a Librarian.

If your search finds a match in our catalog, you will see information about years and formats (paper, electronic, microfiche, etc.) of the journal that we own.

If your journal search retrieves no results, we may be able to borrow the article for you through Interlibrary Loan. It is a good idea to ask a librarian to double-check to make sure we do not own the item.

Even if an article is not available in full text in the database you are using, it may still be available to you online in another library resource.

Go to our online catalog and select journal title. Type in the name of the journal, not the title of the article.

If your search finds a match in our catalog, you will see information about years and formats of the journal that we own. Look for items with a location of INTERNET RESOURCE. This location indicates that at least some years are available online.

Sometimes you want to find articles on a topic from a specific journal. There are several ways to do this.

The old-fashioned way is to simply browse through the journal. Go to our online catalog and select journal title. Type in the name of the journal, not the title of the article. Note the location and the call number. You can then go to the shelves and browse the journal.

A more efficient method is to try searching in an online index. To find a database that indexes your journal, look it up in the UlrichsWeb Periodicals Directory or ask a librarian.

If you have checked the online catalog under journal title and cannot find the journal or volumes/years you need, then you may request your article from another library via Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

More about ILL.