Google searches give you unfiltered and copious results. Finding articles in databases that meet your instructor's requirements takes more skill and evaluation, not to mention time.
Through the Cañada College Library, you have access to dozens of databases, each one containing hundreds of thousands of articles from journals, newspapers and magazines as well as videos. View the library's guide to databases on the library webpage.
Many of your college papers will require "peer-reviewed articles." The "peers" are experts in the same field as the author; for instance, physics professors will review a physics professor's article. A professor or other expert submits their article to the editor of a journal in their field. A psychology professor might submit an article to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. A physicist would submit a paper to Applied Physics journal. The editors of these academic journals then ask the authors' peers - other professors or experts in this field - to evaluate the submitted articles. Those experts then submit their comments and reviews back to the editor, who returns them to the author, who answers the criticisms and rewrites portions of the article to satisfy his "peer" reviewers.
This lengthy editorial review explains why peer-reviewed journals - also known as scholarly or academic journals - usually publish only four times a year. Your instructors expect you to find peer-reviewed articles. This means using limiters to narrow your search results in databases to find these articles. Librarians can help you with this. Databases vary greatly and each offers different features. We can't cover them all here, but we can use a search in one of the more widely used databases as an example. Start from the library's homepage. and click on the "Articles" tab, shown in black in the illustration below. From the left drop-down menu, we'll use a database that includes nearly 4,000 full-text, peer-reviewed journals, Academic Search Complete, highlighted in blue, above.
Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection is a comprehensive database covering information concerning topics in emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry & psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational & experimental methods. In this database you will find academic journal articles, primary research articles, magazine articles, images like photographs, charts and graphs.
JSTOR includes over one thousand high-quality academic journals across the sciences, humanities, social sciences, arts and economics/business.
Academic Search Complete is a multidisciplinary database and thus can be used to find information on research paper topics for any of your classes at Cañada College. This database includes newspaper articles, magazine articles, academic journal articles, images, and reports.
Scholarly, academic, peer-reviewed articles are often very difficult to read! Here are strategies to help:
Hey, whatever you do, don't despair! Remember, these articles were written by professors for other professors! You will grow accustomed to scholarly literature with time.
Try doing an advance search using some of your keywords.
What we love about Google Scholar: Who DOESN'T love Google: powerful, fast, and bountiful!
What drives us crazy about Google Scholar: Many of the articles in Google Scholar are not full-text unless you pay money. Hint: We have found that citations with a "PDF" on the right side of the screen usually are full-text.
Not able to find the full-text for free? E-mail the citation (the basic information) to me, and we will try to track down the article. Never pay for an article! If we can't get it for free, we might be able to pay for it, but you should never pay for an article!