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New Student's Guide to the Library

Incoming freshmen and new students: start here to use library resources

About Articles

As a general rule, look for articles when you need:

  • research studies or scholarly analyses of a relatively narrow topic or aspect of a subject
  • news or general interest information about an event, thing, or person

To find scholarly articles, use database limiters for peer-reviewed or refereed journals, which use experts from the same subject field or profession as the author to evaluate a manuscript prior to acceptance for publication. Learn more about the characteristics of scholarly articles and different kinds of journals and magazines in Evaluating Information Sources.

Find Articles in...

For subject-specific databases (Art, Business, etc.), see Databases by Subject.

 

Sample Searches in Academic Search Complete

  • Include the limiter for scholarly (peer reviewed) journals
  • Subject terms, while helpful for focusing results, sometimes are not assigned until after the initial posting of a record. You also may want to try using subject terms as simple keywords (i.e., without requiring them to appear in the subjects field).
  • Don't limit to full text when you're exploring a topic in depth. You'll miss full text that's available via Find It @ UHCL.

 

A variety of searches, all of which use the limiter for scholarly peer reviewed journals and do not use the limiter for full text

Tip:  Most scholarly articles start with an abstract, a summary that will help you understand the author's approach and main points. When terminology is unfamiliar, try the Merriam-Webster Dictionary search in Britannica.

 

Sample Search

  • Use the publication type limiter periodical to find general interest or popular magazine articles in either OmniFile Full Text Mega or Readers' Guide Full Text

Shows search for metoo or sexual harassment and weinstein with a limiter for publication type periodical

 

Sample Search in US Major Dailies

Shows search for rose mcgowan and harvey weinstein

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Frequently Asked Questions

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