Scholarly journal articles can be very challenging, especially if you're new to them. These sources give some ideas on how to tackle a scholarly journal article.

OneSearch is really what it's name implies, one place to search for many different kinds of sources, including; books, eBooks, academic articles, news articles, videos, and more!

Search Tips:

• 2-5 keywords often works well
• Take advantage of the filters inside of OneSearch
• Try different keywords - think synonyms!
  • Example: dog, puppy, hound, etc.  

The below databases are a great place to either begin your research or browse topics. 

For these databases, use simple 1-3 keywords in your search. 

Useful for controversial issues.

Example Topic: Colleges should do more to support students free speech on college campuses.

Example Searches:

• free speech college
• free* speech college 
• free* speech (college or campus or university)

Search Tools:

Quotation marks: Use these around your keywords for an “exact search”. This tool will give you specific (aka fewer) results because it searches for your keywords exactly as you’ve entered them. 

Example:

• "climate change"
•  "electoral college"
•  "social media"

Asterisk: Use this to shorten a word and search for all possible endings of the root word. This tool will give you more results.

Example:

• politic* = politics, political, politicalization
• congress* = congress, congressional
• elect* = elect, election, electoral, electability
• child* = child, children, childhood, childish, childcare
• prevent* = prevent, prevention, preventing

Parentheses and Or: Use these around keywords separated by the word "or" to expand your search with synonyms. Putting "or" between words means that either term (or both) will be returned in the search. 

Example

• law or legislation
• elections (law or legislation)