Commonwealth Honors College: Getting Started With Library Research

Databases are collections of information. We purchase access to several databases that contain journals and magazines where you can find articles for your research.

There are two types of databases for articles:

Subject-specific: These databases gather articles from journals about specific disciplines or topics, such as Education or Art or Psychology.

• Good for: Finding scholarly articles on very specific topics

Multidisciplinary: These databases gather articles from across multiple disciplines. It could be a database that covers a wide variety of social sciences or it could be a database that covers a wide variety across the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. Using a subject-specific database often means you can search for very specific topics and find materials.

• Good for: Finding scholarly articles on your topic from a variety of perspectives from different disciplines

Articles that are peer-reviewed can also be referred to as  peer-reviewed, refereed or scholarly articles.

Scholarly articles are written by researchers or experts in a field to share the results of their original research or analysis with other researchers, experts and students. These articles go through a process known as "peer review" where the article is reviewed by a group of experts in the field and revised based on peer feedback before being accepted and published by a journal.

This short video further explains what peer review is and why it's important.

These databases are examples of good subject-specific databases for researching the disciplines of Art, Education, and Psychology:

These are examples of multidisciplinary databases that also have a broader focus. Social Science Premium Collection covers multiple disciplines in the social sciences and Scopus has coverage in the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. With Scopus, you can sort by citation to see highly cited articles.

We have more than 600 databases on a wide variety of topics. The spectrum ranges from databases that have a very specific topic to databases that are multidisciplinary.

The easiest way to find databases with articles on your research topic is to use the Databases A-Z List. Use the link below to go the list.

You can use the following filters to find databases based on subject and format:

1. Click on the Subjects filter to narrow down to a specific subject. If you select Multidisciplinary, you will get databases that cover a wide variety of publications.
2. Click on the Types filter and select the Articles filter. This narrows down the list to databases with articles (abstract only and full-text).
3. Finally, click Search.

TIPS

• You can select multiple subjects. Once you've picked one subject, you can go back and select another to add.
• If you use the filters, make sure to click on Clear Filters before switching to another subject and/or format.
• Try exploring different subjects to find databases that have other discipline perspective on your topic. For instance, you might want to explore psychology databases if you're researching the effects of a specific learning theory.
• If there's a database you want to bookmark, make sure to bookmark the link from the Databases A-Z list.

Library staff at the UMass Libraries have developed research guides by subjects, topics and collections. You can look at various guides and see what resources librarians recommend for those subjects, which includes databases where you can find articles.

If the article that you want doesn't have full-text available, look for this icon in the result for the article and click on it:

This will search our other databases to see if it's available full-text. You'll go to a page that may list several of the options if they are available:

Google Scholar searches scholarly literature across many topics. However, we don't know what it searches - you can't tell if it's a comprehensive search of the literature. The benefit of using library databases is that you can see where the information in the database is from, such as a list of publications.

Use Our Google Scholar Link!

You want to use the Google Scholar link from the Databases A-Z list or use the link below (and use that link if you want a bookmark!)

This will allow you to search Google Scholar and if the article is in one our databases, you'll either see a link to the article on the right and/or you will see UMass Check for Full Text. The check for full text will do the same as the UMass icon described above.

Google Scholar Search Tips

• There is an advanced search for Google Scholar. To access it, click on the icon with three horizontal lines on the top left. Click on Advanced Search.
  • You can then limit the search by exact phrases, exclude specific words, or select where the words searched occur (anywhere or just the title). You can also search by the author, journal and/or specific date ranges.
• Most of the article search tips below will work for Google Scholar!

If you know the name of the journal of the article that you want, you can use Publication Finder to see if we have electronic access to the journal. You can search for the name of the publication and limit by publication type.

How To Search

1. The default search will show the options of Title and Contains. Enter the name of the publication or specific words in the publication's name. 
   • If you are getting too many results, you may want to change Contains to Exact Match or Begins With to narrow the results down.
   • You can also switch from Title to ISSN and search by the ISSN for the journal if you have it. You can often find the ISSN on the publisher's page for the journal. This is helpful for journals with frequently used words in the title, such as Journal or Education.
2. If we have access to the journal, you will see one or more databases listed below the publication's name. Make sure to check the date ranges listed to see if we have access to the year that the article you want was published.
   • If you see Full Text Delay, this means that there are only abstracts available for the specified number of years.
3. 
4. Once you've determined that the date is available, click on the name of the database. This will bring you to the details for the publication.
5. What you see next is dependent on the database vendor:
   • Usually there is some way to browse by the year (often on the right or in a drop-down field in a bar under the publication's name).
   • There is often a link to click to search within that publication or sometimes a search bar to immediately search within the publication.