Research articles are found in print and online formats of periodicals. The library subscribes to journals published by professional organizations. These are referred to as "Scholarly Journals." Scholarly journals can be found:
Search for specialized Databases, as well as more general purpose Databases using the [Databases] link, and then the [Subject] drop-down box. [Subject Guides] have lists of Databases specific to an academic department.
This guide will help you identify and understand the parts of a research article.
First, what is a research article? Research articles are usually written for experts in the field--psychologists reporting on a behavioral study of adolescents, or scientists summarizing the results of their experiments with thermodynamics, for example. Research articles are much more scholarly than articles you would find in popular magazines like Newsweek.
You’ll find research articles in publications such as the Journal of Applied Fluid Mechanics and Acupuncture in Medicine: Journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society. Access to these and thousands of other journals is available through the library’s Databases webpage.
There are some basic components to research articles that you should know about. Here’s an example from the Journal of Fire Sciences in the Academic OneFile database. The first page of this 15-page article gives you lots of information.
The end of the article will usually wrap up with a summary.
After the conclusion of the article, there will be a bibliography, or list of References the authors used for their research. These can be useful if you want to check out more sources on your topic.
