English 202: Petrone: Home

Different forms of writing contain different types of information. Books are different from scholarly articles, scholarly articles are different from encyclopedia entries, encyclopedia entries are different from blog posts, and so on. When determining what kind of information you need and where you might find it, it can be helpful to consider the purpose, process, and product.

Purpose

• What is this form of writing sharing?
• Why does it exist?
• For whom is it written?

Process

• By whom is it written?
• Is it reviewed? If so, by whom?
• What does the review process look like?

Product

• What does this form of writing look like?
• What elements do we expect from it?

The Prezi below compares the purpose, process, and product for scholarly periodicals (i.e., peer-reviewed or academic journals) and non-scholarly periodicals (e.g., newspapers, magazines, trade journals).

Identify a topic

To find peer-reviewed articles, you'll first need to identify a topic that you'll search for. If you're not yet aware of key topics in your anticipated field of study or discipline, use Copilot to help you generate some ideas.

Try using this prompt: What are some of the current conversations in the field of [enter your discipline here]? Ex. What are some of the current conversations in the field of Criminology?

Identify keywords

Once you've identified a topic that interests you, you can begin developing your keywords or search terms. Keywords are the main ideas or concepts related to your topic. When using search engines like Google, we may fall into the habit of typing in our entire research question and getting at least some relevant results. This approach does not work with library resources. Rather than typing in your entire research question, you will need to select the most important terms related to your research (your keywords) and use those instead. For instance, if I were researching if and how student loan debt affects a person's ability to purchase a house, I would first try searching student debt homeownership. 

The keyword generator tool linked below can help you identify keywords for your topic.

Find synonyms

Sometimes the words we use to describe something aren't the same words you'll see used in the library catalog or databases. For that reason, it's helpful to think of synonyms for your search terms.

Search tips

• No full sentences
• Use your keywords
• Use synonyms
• Put quotation marks around phrase