When researching a topic one crucial set of resources to consider are academic or scholarly journals where expert professional researchers and scholars publish their research in articles. Many of these publications are peer reviewed which help maintain quality and accuracy of the content published. You can search our library databases for scholarly and peer reviewed articles for use in your research papers.
Within scholarly journals you will find different types of articles. Depending on your needs, knowing these different types will help you find the resources you need for your research. These types include:
See the video below for a quick overview of these types.
Research articles all follow a similar structure. You can identify articles of this type by looking at the sections they contain. Most research articles contain the following sections:
Here's a video discussing the main parts of an empirical research article (Introduction, methods, results, and discussion):
Another good source of research articles is Literature Reviews. Literature reviews gathers academic articles that discuss a group of research projects implemented in a certain area as they pertain to answering a specific research question. These articles will contain references to original research all done to answer a specific question. Reading literature reviews will give you an idea of the the work done in one specific area as well as one professional perspective on this set of research. Look to the Reference List of these articles to find research articles. You can search for the title of these articles by conducting a Quick Search from the library's homepage.