Introduction to Graduate Studies

Why use articles for your graduate course?

Most courses will require you to use articles in your studies, especially articles from professional journals in the field. Journals are important because they:

• contain original research
• are usually more current than other resources (e.g. books, encyclopedias)
• may have passed a quality control process known as "peer review"

Where can I find articles from these scholarly journals?

Journal articles are found by searching some sort of online database. To find articles, you may use:

• Academic Search Premier.(a source for journal articles from the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities; also covers current events).
• Specialized databases for areas such as business, counseling, communications, etc. See our Articles & Databases page for access and more information..
• Google Scholar (lacks some of the content and features that more specialized databases offer but can be used as a starting point. Follow up in other relevant databases when you need to do a comprehensive search of the literature.)

How can I learn to use databases to find articles on a topic?

Help with searching is available from many sources, including:

• in the database you are searching (look for a Help link, often at the top of the page)
• instructional materials such as videos (visit our Training and Tutorials page for general and discipline-speicific videos)
• librarians at Webster University (see our contact information on the left of this page)