DO look for inspiration in the world around you!
Choose topics that have personal meaning to you or are something you would like to learn more about. It is much easier and interesting to research something you care about.
DO focus or broaden the scope of your topic to suit the length of your paper.
DO turn your research topic into research questions -- and jot them down! -- to help you get better results.
This helps you focus on what you need to learn from your sources. It also helps you develop additional keywords for your search.
DO remember that experts' research found in scholarly journal articles lend you their expertise!
DO collect all the citation information you need for your bibliography as you do your research.
Authors. Date. Publication title. Publication Name, vol(issue), page numbers. DOI
PLEASE DO ask for help if you're not finding what you are looking for!
The best database for articles in Psychology. Unlike most library databases, it enables you to search for studies by research methodology, participants' age and gender, and other helpful categories.
PsycINFO provides access to international literature in psychology and related disciplines. Unrivaled in its depth of psychological coverage and respected worldwide for its high quality, the database is enriched with literature from an array of disciplines related to psychology such as psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work. Nearly all records contain nonevaluative summaries, and all records from 1967 to the present are indexed using the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms.
PubMed is a web interface that allows you to search MEDLINE, the National Library of Medicine's premier database of citations and abstracts for biomedical research articles.
PubMed is a web interface that allows you to search MEDLINE, the National Library of Medicine's premier database of citations and abstracts for biomedical research articles. The core subject is medicine, but subject coverage also includes bioethics, biology, chemistry, dentistry, environmental health, genetics, gerontology, health care planning and administration, history of medicine, hospital administration, microbiology, nutrition, nursing (International Nursing Index), physiology, pre-clinical sciences, public health, sports medicine, veterinary medicine and zoology. MEDLINE covers over 4,800 journals published in the United States and 70 other countries. The database contains over 15 million citations dating back to 1950. Coverage is worldwide and updated weekly. Learn more about PubMed at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/pubmed.html. or Try the Tutorial at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/pubmed_tutorial/m1001.html
Need just a few Education articles quickly? Start here.
ProQuest Education Journals provides access to over 785 journals, more than 615 in full text, including all aspects of education, with coverage since 1991-.
Best source for Education literature. Unlike other library databases, ERIC allows you to search for education levels (such as elementary or secondary) and target audience (such as parents or teachers). This version links to Penn State's paid journal subscriptions, enabling you to read articles online.
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is the major database for education literature, sponsored by the U.S. Department. of Education. The same database content is available on many platforms.
Helpful for sociological and social psychological perspectives.
CSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,700 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Records added after 1974 contain in-depth and nonevaluative abstracts of journal articles.
Web of Science provides access to: the Science Citation Index Expanded 1900-present; the Social Sciences Citation Index 1956-present; and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index 1975-present. Web of Science indexes articles from thousands of journals and also indexes the citations used in those articles, thus allowing the user to see which papers have cited a core paper, and how many times a paper was cited in a given time period. Covers published content is almost every discipline.
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Once you set your institutional preferences, links to full-text, if available at Penn State, should appear.
