Research Guides: Graduate Research: How to Find Articles

Overview

The library provides you with several options for searching for journal articles. Using the Search Everything or Articles+ tabs on the library homepage will search across many of our research databases at once. This can be a useful place to start, but its breadth means it doesn't provide you with the most targeted results.

Below are some of our research databases that are most useful to students in VCSU graduate programs. Visit our A to Z database list to see all of the databases we offer.

For a quick explanation of the scholarly peer-review process, see the Peer Review in 3 Minutes video.

Finding a Specific Article

If you know the title of a specific article, but aren't sure if the library has it, you can use the library homepage search bar or the advanced search function to find out.

If the title is very specific, you should be able to type or paste it into the search bar on the library homepage and get results. Put the title in quotation marks before running the search to tell the system that it should search for the entire phrase. If your article is on a common topic or has a a broad title, use advanced search.

There is a link that says advanced search underneath the search bar on the library homepage, which will open the advanced search function.

Set the first search field to search for title, type or paste the title into the field, putting quotation marks around it. If you know the name of the article's author, you can enter it in the second search field. On the right side of the search options, set the material type to articles. You can also try looking up an article's Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

For more information about using advanced search, visit the Databases and Searching Tips research guide.

Useful Databases

General Databases:

Academic One File This link opens in a new window
Academic OneFile is the premier source of peer-reviewed full-text scholarly content across the academic disciplines. With millions of articles available in both PDF and HTML full-text, Academic OneFile is both authoritative and comprehensive.
Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
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Academic Search Premier is a general coverage database providing full-text access to thousands of scholarly journals across a wide range of disciplines, including history, social science, library science, computer science, language and literature, art, education, and life sciences.

Education Databases:

Education Source This link opens in a new window
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Education Source provides access to full text, peer-reviewed, scholarly articles from thousands of education journals, covering a broad range of education topics and educational specialties.
Educator's Reference Complete This link opens in a new window
Educator's Reference Complete is the perfect complement for any library that utilizes the ERIC database, because it provides full-text results for nearly half of the journal titles found in ERIC. This database covers multiple levels of education from preschool to college, and every educational specialty -- such as technology, bilingual education, health education, and testing. Educator's Reference Complete also focuses on issues in administration, funding and policy.
ERIC This link opens in a new window
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) is an authoritative database of indexed and full-text education literature and resources. ERIC contains records and links to hundreds of thousands of full-text documents. It includes records for a variety of source types, including journal articles, books, conference papers, curriculum guides, policy papers and more. In addition, it provides an education-specific thesaurus that includes controlled vocabulary.
Expanded Academic ASAP This link opens in a new window
Expanded Academic ASAP offers balanced coverage on a wide-range of topics including social sciences, humanities, education, science and technology.

Other Discipline-Specific Databases:

Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
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Business Source Premier is a business research database that includes the full text for more than 2,300 journals. Business Source Premier provides full text back to 1886, and searchable cited references back to 1998.
Library Literature and Information Science Full Text (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
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Library Literature & Information Science Full Text provides full text to journals and periodicals covering topics crucial to librarianship, such as cataloging, reference, and collection development.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar
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Google Scholar searches academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Be aware that some of the results that Google Scholar returns will not be peer-reviewed journal articles. For information about configuring Google Scholar for off-campus use, click the green question mark.