Active Content Home: Understanding Scholarly Articles

Kishwaukee College Reference Librarian, Tim Lockman explains how you can effectively skim a scientific journal article to determine if it will be useful to answering your research question.

Information based on the library guide created by the UC Merced Library under licence CC BY-NC 4.0 and linked from the TUS Library at the Technological University of the Shannon.

• For a quick search, enter your keywords and click the magnifying glass icon
• For a more targeted search, use Advanced Search

On the Advanced Search screen, you can select which "fields" you want to search (All Text is very useful for finding extremely unique words within the full text each article!). You can also discover the subject terms used by this resource to describe what the articles are about by selecting Subject (below the search boxes). The thesaurus will guide you to the preferred term for your topic. Apply it to your search.

1. The Subject Thesaurus will lead you to the most relevant resources for your topic. 
2. The Scripture Search will help you find articles about specific books, chapters, and or verses in the Bible.