WRT 205: Research Tips and Resources-McCrary (Spring 2023)

When searching for articles, you may use a general/interdisciplinary database (one that searches all subject areas/all academic disciplines) or a subject database (one that focuses solely on one subject/one discipline or related subjects). This guide will show you leading examples of both types of databases.

When selecting a database, ask yourself these questions:

• What academic discipline does your research fall under?
  • Does it fall under a specific subject like medicine, journalism, public health, economics, business?
  • Does it fall under a larger area such as science, social sciences or humanities?
     
• From what perspective are you examining your topic?
  • Are you approaching it from a scientific, psychological, communications or educational perspective?
     
• What types of documents do you want to retrieve?
  • Are you looking for scholarly journal articles, books, newspaper or magazine articles, industry magazines in health or medicine (i.e., trade publications), images or audiovisual sources, statistical data, government publications, conference papers, dissertations, or something else? 

After you have answered the above questions, try any of the following to help determine which databases to search:

• View the "Starting Points" section on the library's databases A to Z list.
• Try searching all databases provided by particular vendors at once, such as all databases available from ProQuest or EBSCO.

• Hint! Remember that your research might be interdisciplinary. Try not to rely on just one database, no matter how consistently it provides quality results. Other databases may index valuable journals not indexed by your favorite database.

Syracuse University Libraries provides access to over 700 databases containing articles from various types of sources as well as audio files, images, videos, statistics, maps, and more.  You will not need to review that many, and even the most advanced researchers conducting high level literature reviews referred to as "systematic reviews," will be quite selective.

Databases A-Z List

You can browse databases by subject or content type.