Engineering Help Guide

When using a database to find articles from magazines, journals, and newspapers, it is important to understand the different types of sources.

Scholarly Sources 

• Scholarly, or "peer-reviewed" sources, are written by scholars for other scholars and students in a particular field.
• These sources undergo an extensive review process (peer-review) before they are published.
• Usually uses highly technical, specific language in the article. 

Trade Sources 

• Trade sources are written for experts and students in a given field.
• Although they are not scholarly in nature, trade publications can be excellent sources of information.

Popular Sources 

• Popular sources are written for a general audience.
• Popular sources range from entertainment magazines like People to highly regarded national newspapers, such as The New York Times.
• Evaluate articles to make sure they are credible and relevant to your assignment. 

Researching platforms, like EBSCOHost, uses a different set of vocabulary words than you may have used before. Below you will find terms that will help you refine your results while searching. 

• Databases: Select relevant databases that are related to your search. Selecting all the databases will bring back results that aren't related to your topic.
• Keywords: Use keywords, not sentences .
• Add Keywords: Add additional keywords in the second or third search box to help narrow your topic.
• Exclude Keywords: If your results bring back a lot of articles that isn't what you're looking for, but has a keyword in common, you can remove it from your search by using "NOT" instead of "AND" in the keyword area.
• Full Text: Limits your results to only articles that are available to be viewed in their entirety. This is good for when you really want to find an article you can start reading right away, but bad because you will not see results for articles that are available in paper format in the OCCC Library. Also, you will not see other relevant articles that are not owned that you could then order via Interlibrary Loan. 
• Peer Reviewed: Limits your results to only peer reviewed or scholarly articles.Your instructor will let you know if you need this type of article. If you aren't sure, ask your instructor or let a librarian read your assignment. 
• Publication Date: Check to see if your assignment requires an article to be published within a specific date range. 
• Source Type: Limits your results to a specific source like newspaper, magazine, or academic journal. 
• Change Keywords: Sometimes there are synonyms for different words. If you don't like your results, consider changing the keyword to something similar (example: child, infant, toddler, etc.)

Selecting all the databases will bring back results that aren't related to your topic. The following links are good databases to use to find articles when researching.