Locating Scholarly References

Locating scholarly references for your paper can be a challenge. It is less than one week until your final paper is due, and you have none. Where do you begin?

Locating Scholarly References

  • First, focus on finding just one scholarly source that you think will work for your chosen or assigned topic. Once you find one source, your next step is to mine the reference list for leads to other high-quality, scholarly sources. Pay particular attention to authors listed multiple times. Authors cited frequently are regarded as key contributors to the field and should not be omitted from your research.

References

Partial Reference List


  • Another idea is to use the keywords provided in the article header to refine your search. The list of keywords for a journal article are usually provided by the author herself upon submission or acceptance of a manuscript for publication.

Header of Research Article with Keywords Circled


  • When you locate a scholarly article of interest, streamline your initial reading; begin with the abstract and then move on to the introduction and conclusion. If you still find the article of some value, then commit to a thorough reading of the article. Annotate the article as you read by highlighting and writing notes in the margins.
  • Once you have located one promising article, a fourth strategy is to Google that article to find other articles that have cited it. The article in the example below has been cited 131 times. Click on the “Cited by 131 – Related articles” link for a listing of those articles.

Partial Good Search of Cited Scholarly Sources


  • FINALLY, bookmark and make a hard copy of each article you intend to use. You do not want to lose the references that you worked so diligently to find.

Did you find this article helpful? If so, please leave a comment. Do you have other effective strategies that you use to locate sources? If so, please share.