College Level Research

Just like any other skill set, it takes time and practice. The more research you do, the more comfortable you'll become with searching, selecting, and evaluating information. The tutorial will get you started with becoming a research expert so you can find and use college level resources.

College level research requires the kind of credible articles, books, eBooks, and media that you can find through the library.

The longer you are in college, the more your instructors will be requiring you to use college level sources like scholarly & peer reviewed articles and even scholarly articles with that have literature reviews, methodology and results.

Once you have your assignment, these are generally the stages of research:

1. You pick or are assigned a topic.
2. You research your topic with an open mind, using college level books, eBooks, articles or media as determined by the assignment.
3. You draw conclusions about the topic based on what you discovered from the college level sources and write about your findings.

Academic or scholarly articles are written by scholars and experts who have have studied the field about which they are writing for years.

Characteristics of Scholarly Articles

• Articles written by an expert, always signed (author's name listed)
• Credentials of author listed, such as education and position References and sources listed
• Frequently includes graphs, charts
• Frequently have abstracts, which are summaries of the article Aimed at people in the field or studying the field
• Few or no ads

Peer Reviewed Articles

Peer reviewed articles are found in academic or scholarly journals. They are written by scholars and experts, but there is an extra step before publication: Other equally qualified scholars and experts review each article for accuracy and significance before it can be published in a peer reviewed journal.

Because of this more rigorous process, a peer reviewed article is considered to have the most value, even more than other scholarly articles.