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How to Find Sources | Scholarly Articles, Books, Etc.

Published on June 13, 2022 by Eoghan Ryan . Revised on May 31, 2023.

It’s important to know how to find relevant sources when writing a  research paper , literature review , or systematic review .

The types of sources you need will depend on the stage you are at in the research process , but all sources that you use should be credible , up to date, and relevant to your research topic.

There are three main places to look for sources to use in your research:

Research databases

• Your institution’s library
• Other online resources

Table of contents

Library resources, other online sources, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about finding sources.

You can search for scholarly sources online using databases and search engines like Google Scholar . These provide a range of search functions that can help you to find the most relevant sources.

If you are searching for a specific article or book, include the title or the author’s name. Alternatively, if you’re just looking for sources related to your research problem , you can search using keywords. In this case, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the scope of your project and of the most relevant keywords.

Databases can be general (interdisciplinary) or subject-specific.

• You can use subject-specific databases to ensure that the results are relevant to your field.
• When using a general database or search engine, you can still filter results by selecting specific subjects or disciplines.

Example: JSTOR discipline search filter

Check the table below to find a database that’s relevant to your research.

Google Scholar

To get started, you might also try Google Scholar , an academic search engine that can help you find relevant books and articles. Its “Cited by” function lets you see the number of times a source has been cited. This can tell you something about a source’s credibility and importance to the field.

Example: Google Scholar “Cited by” function

Boolean operators

Boolean operators can also help to narrow or expand your search.

Boolean operators are words and symbols like AND , OR , and NOT that you can use to include or exclude keywords to refine your results. For example, a search for “Nietzsche NOT nihilism” will provide results that include the word “Nietzsche” but exclude results that contain the word “nihilism.”

Many databases and search engines have an advanced search function that allows you to refine results in a similar way without typing the Boolean operators manually.

Example: Project Muse advanced search

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You can find helpful print sources in your institution’s library. These include:

• Journal articles
• Encyclopedias
• Newspapers and magazines

Make sure that the sources you consult are appropriate to your research.

You can find these sources using your institution’s library database. This will allow you to explore the library’s catalog and to search relevant keywords. You can refine your results using Boolean operators .

Once you have found a relevant print source in the library:

• Consider what books are beside it. This can be a great way to find related sources, especially when you’ve found a secondary or tertiary source instead of a primary source .
• Consult the index and bibliography to find the bibliographic information of other relevant sources.

You can consult popular online sources to learn more about your topic. These include:

• Crowdsourced encyclopedias like Wikipedia

You can find these sources using search engines. To refine your search, use Boolean operators in combination with relevant keywords.

However, exercise caution when using online sources. Consider what kinds of sources are appropriate for your research and make sure the sites are credible .

Look for sites with trusted domain extensions:

• URLs that end with .edu are educational resources.
• URLs that end with .gov are government-related resources.
• DOIs often indicate that an article is published in a peer-reviewed , scientific article.

Other sites can still be used, but you should evaluate them carefully and consider alternatives.

If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• ChatGPT vs human editor
• ChatGPT citations
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Using ChatGPT for your studies
• What is ChatGPT?
• Chicago style
• Paraphrasing

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• Types of plagiarism
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• Academic integrity
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You can find sources online using databases and search engines like Google Scholar . Use Boolean operators or advanced search functions to narrow or expand your search.

For print sources, you can use your institution’s library database. This will allow you to explore the library’s catalog and to search relevant keywords.

It is important to find credible sources and use those that you can be sure are sufficiently scholarly .

• Consult your institute’s library to find out what books, journals, research databases, and other types of sources they provide access to.
• Look for books published by respected academic publishing houses and university presses, as these are typically considered trustworthy sources.
• Look for journals that use a peer review process. This means that experts in the field assess the quality and credibility of an article before it is published.

When searching for sources in databases, think of specific keywords that are relevant to your topic , and consider variations on them or synonyms that might be relevant.

Once you have a clear idea of your research parameters and key terms, choose a database that is relevant to your research (e.g., Medline, JSTOR, Project MUSE).

Find out if the database has a “subject search” option. This can help to refine your search. Use Boolean operators to combine your keywords, exclude specific search terms, and search exact phrases to find the most relevant sources.

There are many types of sources commonly used in research. These include:

You’ll likely use a variety of these sources throughout the research process , and the kinds of sources you use will depend on your research topic and goals.

Scholarly sources are written by experts in their field and are typically subjected to peer review . They are intended for a scholarly audience, include a full bibliography, and use scholarly or technical language. For these reasons, they are typically considered credible sources .

Popular sources like magazines and news articles are typically written by journalists. These types of sources usually don’t include a bibliography and are written for a popular, rather than academic, audience. They are not always reliable and may be written from a biased or uninformed perspective, but they can still be cited in some contexts.

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Ryan, E. (2023, May 31). How to Find Sources | Scholarly Articles, Books, Etc.. Scribbr. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/finding-sources/

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Search Help

Get the most out of Google Scholar with some helpful tips on searches, email alerts, citation export, and more.

Finding recent papers

Your search results are normally sorted by relevance, not by date. To find newer articles, try the following options in the left sidebar:

• click "Since Year" to show only recently published papers, sorted by relevance;
• click "Sort by date" to show just the new additions, sorted by date;
• click the envelope icon to have new results periodically delivered by email.

Locating the full text of an article

Abstracts are freely available for most of the articles. Alas, reading the entire article may require a subscription. Here're a few things to try:

• click a library link, e.g., "FindIt@Harvard", to the right of the search result;
• click a link labeled [PDF] to the right of the search result;
• click "All versions" under the search result and check out the alternative sources;
• click "Related articles" or "Cited by" under the search result to explore similar articles.

If you're affiliated with a university, but don't see links such as "FindIt@Harvard", please check with your local library about the best way to access their online subscriptions. You may need to do search from a computer on campus, or to configure your browser to use a library proxy.

Getting better answers

If you're new to the subject, it may be helpful to pick up the terminology from secondary sources. E.g., a Wikipedia article for "overweight" might suggest a Scholar search for "pediatric hyperalimentation".

If the search results are too specific for your needs, check out what they're citing in their "References" sections. Referenced works are often more general in nature.

Similarly, if the search results are too basic for you, click "Cited by" to see newer papers that referenced them. These newer papers will often be more specific.

Explore! There's rarely a single answer to a research question. Click "Related articles" or "Cited by" to see closely related work, or search for author's name and see what else they have written.

Searching Google Scholar

Use the "author:" operator, e.g., author:"d knuth" or author:"donald e knuth".

Put the paper's title in quotations: "A History of the China Sea".

You'll often get better results if you search only recent articles, but still sort them by relevance, not by date. E.g., click "Since 2018" in the left sidebar of the search results page.

To see the absolutely newest articles first, click "Sort by date" in the sidebar. If you use this feature a lot, you may also find it useful to setup email alerts to have new results automatically sent to you.

Note: On smaller screens that don't show the sidebar, these options are available in the dropdown menu labelled "Year" right below the search button.

Select the "Case law" option on the homepage or in the side drawer on the search results page.

It finds documents similar to the given search result.

It's in the side drawer. The advanced search window lets you search in the author, title, and publication fields, as well as limit your search results by date.

Select the "Case law" option and do a keyword search over all jurisdictions. Then, click the "Select courts" link in the left sidebar on the search results page.

Tip: To quickly search a frequently used selection of courts, bookmark a search results page with the desired selection.

Access to articles

For each Scholar search result, we try to find a version of the article that you can read. These access links are labelled [PDF] or [HTML] and appear to the right of the search result. For example:

A paper that you need to read

Access links cover a wide variety of ways in which articles may be available to you - articles that your library subscribes to, open access articles, free-to-read articles from publishers, preprints, articles in repositories, etc.

When you are on a campus network, access links automatically include your library subscriptions and direct you to subscribed versions of articles. On-campus access links cover subscriptions from primary publishers as well as aggregators.

Off-campus access

Off-campus access links let you take your library subscriptions with you when you are at home or traveling. You can read subscribed articles when you are off-campus just as easily as when you are on-campus. Off-campus access links work by recording your subscriptions when you visit Scholar while on-campus, and looking up the recorded subscriptions later when you are off-campus.

We use the recorded subscriptions to provide you with the same subscribed access links as you see on campus. We also indicate your subscription access to participating publishers so that they can allow you to read the full-text of these articles without logging in or using a proxy. The recorded subscription information expires after 30 days and is automatically deleted.

In addition to Google Scholar search results, off-campus access links can also appear on articles from publishers participating in the off-campus subscription access program. Look for links labeled [PDF] or [HTML] on the right hand side of article pages.

Anne Author , John Doe , Jane Smith , Someone Else

In this fascinating paper, we investigate various topics that would be of interest to you. We also describe new methods relevant to your project, and attempt to address several questions which you would also like to know the answer to. Lastly, we analyze …

You can disable off-campus access links on the Scholar settings page . Disabling off-campus access links will turn off recording of your library subscriptions. It will also turn off indicating subscription access to participating publishers. Once off-campus access links are disabled, you may need to identify and configure an alternate mechanism (e.g., an institutional proxy or VPN) to access your library subscriptions while off-campus.

Email Alerts

Do a search for the topic of interest, e.g., "M Theory"; click the envelope icon in the sidebar of the search results page; enter your email address, and click "Create alert". We'll then periodically email you newly published papers that match your search criteria.

No, you can enter any email address of your choice. If the email address isn't a Google account or doesn't match your Google account, then we'll email you a verification link, which you'll need to click to start receiving alerts.

This works best if you create a public profile , which is free and quick to do. Once you get to the homepage with your photo, click "Follow" next to your name, select "New citations to my articles", and click "Done". We will then email you when we find new articles that cite yours.

Search for the title of your paper, e.g., "Anti de Sitter space and holography"; click on the "Cited by" link at the bottom of the search result; and then click on the envelope icon in the left sidebar of the search results page.

First, do a search for your colleague's name, and see if they have a Scholar profile. If they do, click on it, click the "Follow" button next to their name, select "New articles by this author", and click "Done".

If they don't have a profile, do a search by author, e.g., [author:s-hawking], and click on the mighty envelope in the left sidebar of the search results page. If you find that several different people share the same name, you may need to add co-author names or topical keywords to limit results to the author you wish to follow.

We send the alerts right after we add new papers to Google Scholar. This usually happens several times a week, except that our search robots meticulously observe holidays.

There's a link to cancel the alert at the bottom of every notification email.

If you created alerts using a Google account, you can manage them all here . If you're not using a Google account, you'll need to unsubscribe from the individual alerts and subscribe to the new ones.

Google Scholar library

Google Scholar library is your personal collection of articles. You can save articles right off the search page, organize them by adding labels, and use the power of Scholar search to quickly find just the one you want - at any time and from anywhere. You decide what goes into your library, and we’ll keep the links up to date.

You get all the goodies that come with Scholar search results - links to PDF and to your university's subscriptions, formatted citations, citing articles, and more!

Library help

Find the article you want to add in Google Scholar and click the “Save” button under the search result.

Click “My library” at the top of the page or in the side drawer to view all articles in your library. To search the full text of these articles, enter your query as usual in the search box.

Find the article you want to remove, and then click the “Delete” button under it.

• To add a label to an article, find the article in your library, click the “Label” button under it, select the label you want to apply, and click “Done”.
• To view all the articles with a specific label, click the label name in the left sidebar of your library page.
• To remove a label from an article, click the “Label” button under it, deselect the label you want to remove, and click “Done”.
• To add, edit, or delete labels, click “Manage labels” in the left column of your library page.

Only you can see the articles in your library. If you create a Scholar profile and make it public, then the articles in your public profile (and only those articles) will be visible to everyone.

Your profile contains all the articles you have written yourself. It’s a way to present your work to others, as well as to keep track of citations to it. Your library is a way to organize the articles that you’d like to read or cite, not necessarily the ones you’ve written.

Citation Export

Click the "Cite" button under the search result and then select your bibliography manager at the bottom of the popup. We currently support BibTeX, EndNote, RefMan, and RefWorks.

Err, no, please respect our robots.txt when you access Google Scholar using automated software. As the wearers of crawler's shoes and webmaster's hat, we cannot recommend adherence to web standards highly enough.

Sorry, we're unable to provide bulk access. You'll need to make an arrangement directly with the source of the data you're interested in. Keep in mind that a lot of the records in Google Scholar come from commercial subscription services.

Sorry, we can only show up to 1,000 results for any particular search query. Try a different query to get more results.

Content Coverage

Google Scholar includes journal and conference papers, theses and dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research. You'll find works from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies and university repositories, as well as scholarly articles available anywhere across the web. Google Scholar also includes court opinions and patents.

We index research articles and abstracts from most major academic publishers and repositories worldwide, including both free and subscription sources. To check current coverage of a specific source in Google Scholar, search for a sample of their article titles in quotes.

While we try to be comprehensive, it isn't possible to guarantee uninterrupted coverage of any particular source. We index articles from sources all over the web and link to these websites in our search results. If one of these websites becomes unavailable to our search robots or to a large number of web users, we have to remove it from Google Scholar until it becomes available again.

Our meticulous search robots generally try to index every paper from every website they visit, including most major sources and also many lesser known ones.

That said, Google Scholar is primarily a search of academic papers. Shorter articles, such as book reviews, news sections, editorials, announcements and letters, may or may not be included. Untitled documents and documents without authors are usually not included. Website URLs that aren't available to our search robots or to the majority of web users are, obviously, not included either. Nor do we include websites that require you to sign up for an account, install a browser plugin, watch four colorful ads, and turn around three times and say coo-coo before you can read the listing of titles scanned at 10 DPI... You get the idea, we cover academic papers from sensible websites.

That's usually because we index many of these papers from other websites, such as the websites of their primary publishers. The "site:" operator currently only searches the primary version of each paper.

It could also be that the papers are located on examplejournals.gov, not on example.gov. Please make sure you're searching for the "right" website.

That said, the best way to check coverage of a specific source is to search for a sample of their papers using the title of the paper.

Ahem, we index papers, not journals. You should also ask about our coverage of universities, research groups, proteins, seminal breakthroughs, and other dimensions that are of interest to users. All such questions are best answered by searching for a statistical sample of papers that has the property of interest - journal, author, protein, etc. Many coverage comparisons are available if you search for [allintitle:"google scholar"], but some of them are more statistically valid than others.

Currently, Google Scholar allows you to search and read published opinions of US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950, US federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 and US Supreme Court cases since 1791. In addition, it includes citations for cases cited by indexed opinions or journal articles which allows you to find influential cases (usually older or international) which are not yet online or publicly available.

Legal opinions in Google Scholar are provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied on as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed lawyer. Google does not warrant that the information is complete or accurate.

We normally add new papers several times a week. However, updates to existing records take 6-9 months to a year or longer, because in order to update our records, we need to first recrawl them from the source website. For many larger websites, the speed at which we can update their records is limited by the crawl rate that they allow.

Inclusion and Corrections

We apologize, and we assure you the error was unintentional. Automated extraction of information from articles in diverse fields can be tricky, so an error sometimes sneaks through.

Please write to the owner of the website where the erroneous search result is coming from, and encourage them to provide correct bibliographic data to us, as described in the technical guidelines . Once the data is corrected on their website, it usually takes 6-9 months to a year or longer for it to be updated in Google Scholar. We appreciate your help and your patience.

If you can't find your papers when you search for them by title and by author, please refer your publisher to our technical guidelines .

You can also deposit your papers into your institutional repository or put their PDF versions on your personal website, but please follow your publisher's requirements when you do so. See our technical guidelines for more details on the inclusion process.

We normally add new papers several times a week; however, it might take us some time to crawl larger websites, and corrections to already included papers can take 6-9 months to a year or longer.

Google Scholar generally reflects the state of the web as it is currently visible to our search robots and to the majority of users. When you're searching for relevant papers to read, you wouldn't want it any other way!

If your citation counts have gone down, chances are that either your paper or papers that cite it have either disappeared from the web entirely, or have become unavailable to our search robots, or, perhaps, have been reformatted in a way that made it difficult for our automated software to identify their bibliographic data and references. If you wish to correct this, you'll need to identify the specific documents with indexing problems and ask your publisher to fix them. Please refer to the technical guidelines .

Please do let us know . Please include the URL for the opinion, the corrected information and a source where we can verify the correction.

We're only able to make corrections to court opinions that are hosted on our own website. For corrections to academic papers, books, dissertations and other third-party material, click on the search result in question and contact the owner of the website where the document came from. For corrections to books from Google Book Search, click on the book's title and locate the link to provide feedback at the bottom of the book's page.

General Questions

These are articles which other scholarly articles have referred to, but which we haven't found online. To exclude them from your search results, uncheck the "include citations" box on the left sidebar.

First, click on links labeled [PDF] or [HTML] to the right of the search result's title. Also, check out the "All versions" link at the bottom of the search result.

Second, if you're affiliated with a university, using a computer on campus will often let you access your library's online subscriptions. Look for links labeled with your library's name to the right of the search result's title. Also, see if there's a link to the full text on the publisher's page with the abstract.

Keep in mind that final published versions are often only available to subscribers, and that some articles are not available online at all. Good luck!

Technically, your web browser remembers your settings in a "cookie" on your computer's disk, and sends this cookie to our website along with every search. Check that your browser isn't configured to discard our cookies. Also, check if disabling various proxies or overly helpful privacy settings does the trick. Either way, your settings are stored on your computer, not on our servers, so a long hard look at your browser's preferences or internet options should help cure the machine's forgetfulness.

Not even close. That phrase is our acknowledgement that much of scholarly research involves building on what others have already discovered. It's taken from Sir Isaac Newton's famous quote, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

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Finding Scholarly Articles: Home

What's a Scholarly Article?

Your professor has specified that you are to use scholarly (or primary research or peer-reviewed or refereed or academic) articles only in your paper. What does that mean?

Scholarly or primary research articles are peer-reviewed , which means that they have gone through the process of being read by reviewers or referees  before being accepted for publication. When a scholar submits an article to a scholarly journal, the manuscript is sent to experts in that field to read and decide if the research is valid and the article should be published. Typically the reviewers indicate to the journal editors whether they think the article should be accepted, sent back for revisions, or rejected.

To decide whether an article is a primary research article, look for the following:

• The author’s (or authors') credentials and academic affiliation(s) should be given;
• There should be an abstract summarizing the research;
• The methods and materials used should be given, often in a separate section;
• There are citations within the text or footnotes referencing sources used;
• Results of the research are given;
• There should be discussion   and  conclusion ;
• With a bibliography or list of references at the end.

Caution: even though a journal may be peer-reviewed, not all the items in it will be. For instance, there might be editorials, book reviews, news reports, etc. Check for the parts of the article to be sure.   

You can limit your search results to primary research, peer-reviewed or refereed articles in many databases. To search for scholarly articles in  HOLLIS , type your keywords in the box at the top, and select  Catalog&Articles  from the choices that appear next.   On the search results screen, look for the  Show Only section on the right and click on  Peer-reviewed articles . (Make sure to  login in with your HarvardKey to get full-text of the articles that Harvard has purchased.)

Many of the databases that Harvard offers have similar features to limit to peer-reviewed or scholarly articles.  For example in Academic Search Premier , click on the box for Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals  on the search screen.

Review articles are another great way to find scholarly primary research articles.   Review articles are not considered "primary research", but they pull together primary research articles on a topic, summarize and analyze them.  In Google Scholar , click on Review Articles  at the left of the search results screen. Ask your professor whether review articles can be cited for an assignment.

A note about Google searching.  A regular Google search turns up a broad variety of results, which can include scholarly articles but Google results also contain commercial and popular sources which may be misleading, outdated, etc.  Use Google Scholar  through the Harvard Library instead.

About Wikipedia .  W ikipedia is not considered scholarly, and should not be cited, but it frequently includes references to scholarly articles. Before using those references for an assignment, double check by finding them in Hollis or a more specific subject  database .

Still not sure about a source? Consult the course syllabus for guidance, contact your professor or teaching fellow, or use the Ask A Librarian service.

• Last Updated: Oct 3, 2023 3:37 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/FindingScholarlyArticles

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Scopus Search

Scopus quickly delivers the information you're looking for from over 92m records. Updated daily, Scopus features state-of-the-art search tools and filters to empower research efficiency.

Increase research efficiency

Having access to comprehensive content and high-quality data is only effective if you can easily find the information you need. Uncovering trends, discovering sources and potential collaborators, and building deeper insights require effective search tools that can identify the right results.

Identify trends for key topics

Scopus’ literature search is built to distill massive amounts of information down to the most relevant documents and information in less time.

With Scopus you can search and filter results in the following ways:

Document search : Search directly from the homepage and use detailed search options to ensure you find the document(s) you want

Author search : Search for a specific author by name or by Open Research and Contributor Identifier ID (ORCID)

Affiliation search : Identify and assess an affiliation’s scholarly output, collaborating institutions and top authors

Advanced search : Narrow the scope of your search using field codes, proximity operators and/or Boolean operators

Refine results : Scopus makes it easy to refine your results list to specific categories of documents

Language interface : The Scopus interface is available in Chinese and Japanese; content is not localized, but you can switch the interface to one of these language options (and switch back to English, the default language) at the bottom of any Scopus page

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How to Find Primary Research Articles on Google Scholar

How to Find Primary Research Articles on Google Scholar can be a daunting task. But with the right tips and tricks, you can quickly locate relevant sources to inform your work or study. By leveraging advanced search features like My Library, you’ll be able to stay organized while exploring topics of interest in no time. Let’s dive into how best to find primary research articles on Google Scholar so that you can get started uncovering valuable insights today.

Table of Contents

What is Google Scholar?

Searching for primary research articles on google scholar, tips for effective searches on google scholar, utilizing advanced search features, keeping track of your research with my library on google scholar, additional resources for finding primary research articles on google scholar, faqs in relation to how to find primary research articles on google scholar, how do i search for only primary articles in google scholar, how do i find primary research articles, how do i find research articles on google scholar, how do you tell if an article is a primary or secondary source.

Google Scholar is an online search engine that allows users to find primary research articles. Google Scholar, established in 2004, is a powerful search engine that gives access to scholarly documents including theses, preprints, and books. By using advanced algorithms and natural language processing techniques it offers a more comprehensive view of academic publications than traditional databases or search engines like Google.

How to Find Primary Research Articles on Google Scholar has numerous advantages; it provides a convenient way for researchers to quickly find applicable sources needed for their research without having to browse through many web pages or databases. Secondly, its sophisticated algorithms allow researchers to refine their searches based on relevance and date published to easily narrow down results for specific topics or time periods. Finally, because it indexes content from across the web – including open-access repositories such as PubMed Central – users have access to full-text versions of articles that may not be available elsewhere.

Accessing Google Scholar is easy; simply go to scholar.google.com and start searching with keywords related to your topic area or use the Advanced Search feature if you want more control over your results (e.g., restricting by author name). You can also sign up for an account which will enable you to save searches, create alerts when new content is added that matches your criteria, and organize references into collections known as ‘My Library’ – making tracking progress on a project much more efficient.

Google Scholar is an invaluable resource for researchers looking to access primary research articles. With the right search techniques, you can easily find full-text articles on Google Scholar and maximize your research potential. Next, we’ll explore how to use the search interface and refine results in order to locate these resources more effectively.

“Easily find primary research articles for your #R&D project with Google Scholar. Advanced algorithms and natural language processing make it easier to narrow down results quickly.” #Cypris Click to Tweet

To make the process easier, it is important to understand the search interface and refine your results with filters and preferences.

The first step in searching for primary research articles on Google Scholar is understanding the search interface. This includes learning how to use keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), quotation marks (” “) for exact phrases, and wildcards (*). These search parameters can be employed to refine the results, making them pertinent to your inquiry.

Utilizing filters and personal preferences to narrow down search results can expedite the discovery of what is needed. With advanced features like citation tracking, “My Library” which allows users to save their searches, and “Similar Articles” for discovering related topics within a field of study, the research process is made easier. Additionally, keywords such as Boolean operators (AND, OR NOT), quotation marks (” “) for exact phrases, and wildcards (*) can be used to narrow down results in order to make them more relevant.

Finally, finding full-text articles is key when researching primary research papers on Google Scholar. The platform offers access to free versions of some publications through its “Find Full Text @ Your Library” feature but many require a subscription or purchase fee before viewing them in full detail online or downloading them as PDFs.

Exploring Google Scholar for primary research articles can be laborious, yet with some useful tips and tricks you can enhance your search results. Now that we have an understanding of the search interface, let’s explore how to refine our results and find full-text articles using advanced features such as filters and preferences.

Unlock the power of Google Scholar for primary research papers with advanced features like citation tracking, My Library, and Similar Articles. Use Boolean operators & wildcards to refine your search results. #GoogleScholar #ResearchPapers Click to Tweet

Google Scholar is an invaluable tool for researchers, scientists, and engineers looking to stay up-to-date on the latest research in their field. With its advanced search features, it can help you quickly find primary research articles that are relevant to your project or interests. Here are some suggestions to optimize your utilization of Google Scholar when seeking out primary research papers.

Google Scholar has several advanced search options that allow you to refine your searches and find more specific results. For example, you can limit your search by date range, language, author name, or journal title. Boolean operators, like “AND” and “OR”, can be utilized to form a single query by combining various keywords.

To refine your search even further, you can utilize the filters and preferences available on Google Scholar to narrow down results according to peer-reviewed papers from journals with high-impact factors or exclude certain authors or topics. For instance, if you want only peer-reviewed papers from journals with high-impact factors then simply select those filters before conducting your search. Additionally, if there are certain authors or topics that you would like excluded from your results then this too can be done via the preferences menu within Google Scholar.

Once you have located some applicable articles through basic keyword searches, delving into associated citations and related content can help to expand your understanding of the topic. This is especially helpful if there is not much information available on a particular subject yet, but still offers potential avenues of exploration worth pursuing further down the line. By exploring related articles and citations associated with each article one will often uncover new ideas which could potentially lead them toward interesting discoveries.

By making use of the sophisticated search capabilities, filters, and preferences provided by Google Scholar, one can easily identify primary research material related to their requirements. My Library on Google Scholar is an excellent tool for organizing and tracking your research; let’s explore how it works.

Key Takeaway  Google Scholar provides advanced search features, filters and preferences to help researchers quickly locate primary research articles relevant to their project or interests. By making use of these tools and exploring related articlescitations associated with each article one can uncover new ideas that could lead them towards interesting discoveries. Google Scholar is a great aid in locating pertinent research articles.

My Library on Google Scholar is a great asset for scientists and innovators to monitor their research progress. My Library enables users to construct a personalized repository of scholarly works, which they can organize into categories, export as bibliographies, or share with others.

Setting up a personal library in My Library is easy. To create a personal library, simply click the “My Library” link at the top right corner of any page on Google Scholar and select “Create new library” from the drop-down menu. Once your library has been created, you can start adding articles by clicking the “Save” button next to each article title in your search results list.

Organizing your library is also simple; simply drag and drop articles into different folders within My Library for easy access later on. You can also create collections of related topics or research themes which are great for organizing large amounts of data quickly and easily. Moreover, you can label articles with descriptors to make them easier to locate when needed.

By utilizing My Library on Google Scholar, researchers can easily keep track of their research and stay organized. Additionally, by exploring other databases in conjunction with Google Scholar as well as open-access journals and interlibrary loan services, they can find even more primary research articles to further their studies.

Key Takeaway  My Library on Google Scholar is a great resource for researchers and innovators to stay organized with their research. Creating a library is straightforward – just hit the ‘Create new library’ button in the top right of any page on Google Scholar, and then drag & drop articles into collections or folders to keep them ordered. Moreover, you can assign labels or tags to make it simpler to locate the material when necessary.

It can provide access to a wide variety of sources, including journal articles, books, and conference papers. Nevertheless, in order to broaden one’s search range, other databases and sources can be used alongside Google Scholar.

Using Other Databases in Conjunction with Google Scholar: Many academic institutions have their own subscription-based library databases that can be accessed through the institution’s website or portal. These databases may include full-text versions of some journals not available on Google Scholar as well as more comprehensive indexing than what is available on Google Scholar. Moreover, numerous universities offer access to specialized databases such as Web of Science or Scopus that enable users to search across multiple areas and sources simultaneously.

Open-access journals, which receive funding from sources such as the NIH and Wellcome Trusts, provide free online content under Creative Commons licenses for readers to share or reuse without permission. Open-access journals typically make all content freely available online and often use Creative Commons licenses so readers are free to share and reuse material without permission from the publisher or author(s). While these publications tend to focus more heavily on scientific topics rather than humanities topics they still contain valuable information worth exploring when searching for primary research articles related specifically to science fields such as biology or medicine.

If a desired article cannot be located elsewhere, interlibrary loan services may provide an avenue to acquire it through either physical or digital means. Through this service, users can request copies of materials held by another library either physically (through mail) or electronically (via email). This allows researchers who do not have immediate access to certain materials due to geographical restrictions the ability to acquire them nonetheless, thus greatly expanding their research capabilities beyond what would otherwise be possible with just local resources alone.

Key Takeaway  Google Scholar is a great tool for finding primary research articles, however there are other databases and resources that can be used in conjunction with it to maximize search capabilities. Additionally, open access journals may provide valuable content related to scientific fields while interlibrary loan services can also help researchers acquire materials from libraries located elsewhere.

To search for primary articles in Google Scholar, first, go to the main page and select ‘Advanced Search’. In the Advanced Search window, check off the box that says ‘Only show results from content I can access’ and then select ‘Include Patents’. Finally, click on ‘Search’. This will filter out all secondary sources such as reviews or books, leaving only primary research articles relevant to your query.

Primary research materials can be obtained through multiple avenues, such as searching online repositories, utilizing sophisticated search strategies, and consulting specialists in the discipline. Utilizing PubMed and other online databases, researchers can access an abundance of primary research articles covering a broad range of topics. Advanced search techniques involve combining keywords with Boolean operators (AND/OR) to refine searches for specific results. Consulting experts in the field is also an effective way to locate relevant primary research articles as they have specialized knowledge about certain areas that may not be available from other sources.

Begin your hunt for research articles on Google Scholar by inputting a keyword or phrase in the search field. You can refine your search results by applying filters such as date of publication, author name, and topic area. To further narrow down your search results you can use advanced search features like exact phrases and multiple keywords. Additionally, you may access scholarly literature through library databases that are connected to Google Scholar. Finally, save time by setting up email alerts for newly published papers related to topics of interest.

A primary source is an original document or record that provides first-hand information about a particular topic. Examples of primary sources can include interviews, diaries, letters, articles from when an event occurred, and photos and videos taken during the occurrence. Secondary sources are documents or records created after the fact by someone who did not experience the events firsthand. These may include books, journal articles, and reviews that analyze or discuss research already published by others.

How to find primary research articles on Google Scholar is an essential skill for researchers and innovators. With its advanced search capabilities, My Library feature, and additional resources available online, it can be an invaluable asset in the quest to discover new insights into any given topic. Whether you are looking for one article or hundreds of them on a specific subject matter – Google Scholar is here to help. Use these tips as your guide when searching for primary research articles on Google Scholar so that you can get the most out of this platform’s features.

Discover the power of Cypris to quickly find primary research articles on Google Scholar and unlock insights faster for your R&D and innovation teams. Unlock time-saving solutions with our comprehensive platform that centralizes data sources into one easy-to-use interface.

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Evaluating Information

• Understanding Primary and Secondary Sources
• Exploring and Evaluating Popular, Trade, and Scholarly Sources

Reading a Scholarly Article

Common components of original research articles, while you read, reading strategies, reading for citations, further reading, learning objectives.

This page was created to help you:

Identify the different parts of a scholarly article

Efficiently analyze and evaluate scholarly articles for usefulness

This page will focus on reading scholarly articles — published reports on original research in the social sciences, humanities, and STEM fields. Reading and understanding this type of article can be challenging. This guide will help you develop these skills, which can be learned and improved upon with practice.

We will go over:

There are many different types of articles that may be found in scholarly journals and other academic publications. For more, see:

• Types of Information Sources

Reading a scholarly article isn’t like reading a novel, website, or newspaper article. It’s likely you won’t read and absorb it from beginning to end, all at once.

Instead, think of scholarly reading as inquiry, i.e., asking a series of questions as you do your research or read for class. Your reading should be guided by your class topic or your own research question or thesis.

For example, as you read, you might ask yourself:

• What questions does it help to answer, or what topics does it address?
• Are these relevant or useful to me?
• Does the article offer a helpful framework for understanding my topic or question (theoretical framework)?
• Do the authors use interesting or innovative methods to conduct their research that might be relevant to me?
• Does the article contain references I might consult for further information?

In Practice

Scanning and skimming are essential when reading scholarly articles, especially at the beginning stages of your research or when you have a lot of material in front of you.

Many scholarly articles are organized to help you scan and skim efficiently. The next time you need to read an article, practice scanning the following sections (where available) and skim their contents:

• The abstract: This summary provides a birds’ eye view of the article contents.
• The introduction:  What is the topic(s) of the research article? What is its main idea or question?
• The list of keywords or descriptors
• Methods: How did the author(s) go about answering their question/collecting their data?
• Section headings:  Stop and skim those sections you may find relevant.
• Figures:  Offer lots of information in quick visual format.
• The conclusion:  What are the findings and/or conclusions of this article?

Mark Up Your Text

Read with purpose.

• Scanning and skimming with a pen in hand can help to focus your reading.
• Use color for quick reference. Try highlighters or some sticky notes. Use different colors to represent different topics.
• Write in the margins, putting down thoughts and questions about the content as you read.
• Use digital markup features available in eBook platforms or third-party solutions, like Adobe Reader or Hypothes.is.

Categorize Information

Create your own informal system of organization. It doesn’t have to be complicated — start basic, and be sure it works for you.

• Jot down a few of your own keywords for each article. These keywords may correspond with important topics being addressed in class or in your research paper.  
• Write keywords on print copies or use the built-in note taking features in reference management tools like Zotero and EndNote.  
• Your keywords and system of organization may grow more complex the deeper you get into your reading.

Highlight words, terms, phrases, acronyms, etc. that are unfamiliar to you. You can highlight on the text or make a list in a notetaking program.

• Decide if the term is essential to your understanding of the article or if you can look it up later and keep scanning.

You may scan an article and discover that it isn’t what you thought it was about. Before you close the tab or delete that PDF, consider scanning the article one more time, specifically to look for citations that might be more on-target for your topic.  

You don’t need to look at every citation in the bibliography — you can look to the literature review to identify the core references that relate to your topic. Literature reviews are typically organized by subtopic within a research question or thesis. Find the paragraph or two that are closely aligned with your topic, make note of the author names, then locate those citations in the bibliography or footnote.

See the Find Articles page for what to do next:

• Find Articles

See the Citation Searching page for more on following a citation trail:

• Citation Searching
• Taking notes effectively. [blog post] Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD
• How to read an academic paper. [video] UBCiSchool. 2013
• How to (seriously) read a scientific paper. (2016, March 21). Science | AAAS.
• How to read a paper. S. Keshav. 2007. SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 37, 3 (July 2007), 83–84.

This guide was designed to help you:

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How to efficiently search online databases for academic research

How to access academic databases

How to search academic databases, 1. use the campus network to access research databases, 2. find databases that are specifically related to your topic, 3. set up the search parameters within a database to be as narrow as possible, 4. ask a librarian for help, 5. slowly expand your search to get additional results, 6. use the pro features of the database, 7. try a more general database, if needed, 8. keep track of seminal works, frequently asked questions about searching online databases, related articles.

University libraries provide access to plenty of online academic databases that can yield good results when you use the right strategies. They are among the best sources to turn to when you need to find articles from scholarly journals, books, and other periodicals.

Searching an online research database is much like searching the internet, but the hits returned will be scholarly articles and other academic sources, depending on the subject. In this guide, we highlight 8 tips for searching academic databases.

• Use college and university library networks.
• Search subject-specific databases.
• Set up search parameters.
• Ask a librarian for help.
• Narrow or broaden your search, as needed.
• Use the pro features, where applicable.
• Try a more general database.
• Keep track of seminal works.

Tip: The best practice is to use the links provided on your library's website to access academic databases.

Most academic databases cannot be accessed for free. As authoritative resources, these multi-disciplinary databases are comprehensive collections of the current literature on a broad range of topics. Because they have a huge range of publications, public access is sometimes restricted.

College and university libraries pay for subscriptions to popular academic databases. As a student, staff, or faculty member, you can access these resources from home thanks to proxy connections.

➡️ Check out our list of EZProxy connections to see if your institution provides such a service.

Tip: Searching the right databases is key to finding the right academic journals.

Around 2.5 million articles are published EACH year. As a result, it's important to search the right database for the reference you need. Comprehensive databases often contain subject-specific resources and filters and these will help you narrow down your search results. Otherwise, you will have to screen too many unrelated papers that won't give you the reference you want.

Ask a librarian or check your library's A-Z resource list to find out which databases you can access. If you do not know where to start, you can check out the three biggest academic database providers:

➡️ Take a look at our compilations of research databases for computer science or healthcare .

Unlike in a Google search, typing in full sentences will not bring you satisfactory results. Some strategies for narrowing search parameters include:

• Narrowing your search terms in order to get the most pertinent information from the scholarly resources you are reviewing
• Narrowing results by filters like specific date range or source type
• Using more specific keywords

If your university library has a subject specialist in your field, you may want to contact them for guidance on keywords and other subject- and database-specific search strategies. Consider asking a librarian to meet you for a research consultation.

A specific search might not return as many results. This can be good because these results will most likely be current and applicable. If you do not get enough results, however, slowly expand the:

• type of journal

From there, you'll be able to find a wider variety of related technical reports, books, academic journals, and other potential results that you can use for your research.

Academic search engines and databases are getting smart! In the age of big data and text mining, many databases crunch millions of scientific papers to extract connections between them. Watch out for things like:

• related relevant articles
• similar academic resources
• list of "cited by" or "citations"
• list of references

When you have thoroughly finished searching a comprehensive database, you can move on to another to find more results. Some databases that cover the same topics might give you the same search results, but they might also cover an entire range of different journals or online resources.

You might prefer the search system of one database over another based on the results you get from keyword searches. One database might have more advanced search options than the other. You can also try a more general database like:

• Web Of Science

➡️ Visit our list of the best academic research databases .

There are experts in every field, people who have published a lot of scholarly content on your topic, people who get quoted or interviewed a lot and seem to be present almost everywhere. Pay attention to those names when searching a database and once you have found someone interesting, you can search for more from that person.

Also, take note of seminal articles, or those works that have been cited repeatedly within your field. Many major databases for academic journals have features that allow you to quickly determine which articles are cited most frequently.

➡️ Ready to start writing your paper? Visit our guide on how to start a research paper .

Your institution's library provides access to plenty of online research databases. They are among the best sources to turn to when you need to find articles from scholarly journals and periodicals.

Searching the right databases is key to finding the right articles. Ask a librarian or check your library's website to access details. If you do not know where to start, check out the three biggest academic database providers:

Or take a look at our compilation of research database for computer science or healthcare .

You can narrow your search by only including articles within a specific date range or unchecking certain types of journals or magazines that are included in the database but have nothing to do with your topic. Make sure to also use very specific keywords when searching.

Unlike in a Google search, typing in full sentences will not bring you satisfactory results. There are different methods to search different databases. Ask a librarian or do an internet search on how to best search your particular database.

Narrowing down a search might not return many results. If you do not get enough results, slowly expand the date range, type of journal, or keywords.

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How do I find quantitative research articles?

Quantitative research focuses on gathering numerical data.

To locate qualitative research articles, use a  subject-specific database  or a general library database like  Academic Search Ultimate  or  Google Scholar .

Finding this types of research takes a bit of investigation. Try this method.

Begin by entering your keywords and conducting a search.     Example:      gardening AND mental health AND students

Since quantitative research is based on the collection and analysis of data (like numbers or statistics), you will need to look at article titles and abstracts for clues.   If a title or abstract contains terms like these, it's probably a quantitative research article.

• Data Analysis
• Longitudinal Studies
• Statistical Analysis
• Statistical Studies
• Statistical Surveys

You could also experiment with using one of those terms in your search query.     Example:      gardening AND mental health AND data analysis

See this guide from the University of Texas. Quantitative and Qualitative Research

Download this guide from Winston Salem State University Key Elements of a Research Proposal: Quantitative Design (PDF)

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Scholarly Articles: How can I tell?

• Journal Information
• Literature Review
• Author and affiliation
• Introduction
• Specialized Vocabulary

Methodology

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• Peer-review

The methodology section or methods section tells you how the author(s) went about doing their research. It should let you know a) what method they used to gather data (survey, interviews, experiments, etc.), why they chose this method, and what the limitations are to this method.

The methodology section should be detailed enough that another researcher could replicate the study described. When you read the methodology or methods section:

• What kind of research method did the authors use? Is it an appropriate method for the type of study they are conducting?
• How did the authors get their tests subjects? What criteria did they use?
• What are the contexts of the study that may have affected the results (e.g. environmental conditions, lab conditions, timing questions, etc.)
• Is the sample size representative of the larger population (i.e., was it big enough?)
• Are the data collection instruments and procedures likely to have measured all the important characteristics with reasonable accuracy?
• Does the data analysis appear to have been done with care, and were appropriate analytical techniques used? 

A good researcher will always let you know about the limitations of his or her research.

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What is an original research article?

An original research article is a report of research activity that is written by the researchers who conducted the research or experiment. Original research articles may also be referred to as: “primary research articles” or “primary scientific literature.” In science courses, instructors may also refer to these as “peer-reviewed articles” or “refereed articles.”

Original research articles in the sciences have a specific purpose, follow a scientific article format, are peer reviewed, and published in academic journals.

Identifying Original Research: What to Look For

An "original research article" is an article that is reporting original research about new data or theories that have not been previously published. That might be the results of new experiments, or newly derived models or simulations. The article will include a detailed description of the methods used to produce them, so that other researchers can verify them. This description is often found in a section called "methods" or "materials and methods" or similar. Similarly, the results will generally be described in great detail, often in a section called "results."

Since the original research article is reporting the results of new research, the authors should be the scientists who conducted that research. They will have expertise in the field, and will usually be employed by a university or research lab.

In comparison, a newspaper or magazine article (such as in  The New York Times  or  National Geographic ) will usually be written by a journalist reporting on the actions of someone else.

An original research article will be written by and for scientists who study related topics. As such, the article should use precise, technical language to ensure that other researchers have an exact understanding of what was done, how to do it, and why it matters. There will be plentiful citations to previous work, helping place the research article in a broader context. The article will be published in an academic journal, follow a scientific format, and undergo peer-review.

Original research articles in the sciences follow the scientific format. ( This tutorial from North Carolina State University illustrates some of the key features of this format.)

Look for signs of this format in the subject headings or subsections of the article. You should see the following:

Scientific research that is published in academic journals undergoes a process called "peer review."

The peer review process goes like this:

• A researcher writes a paper and sends it in to an academic journal, where it is read by an editor
• The editor then sends the article to other scientists who study similar topics, who can best evaluate the article
• The scientists/reviewers examine the article's research methodology, reasoning, originality, and sginificance
• The scientists/reviewers then make suggestions and comments to impove the paper
• The original author is then given these suggestions and comments, and makes changes as needed
• This process repeats until everyone is satisfied and the article can be published within the academic journal

For more details about this process see the Peer Reviewed Publications guide.

This journal article  is an example. It was published in the journal  Royal Society Open Science  in 2015. Clicking on the button that says "Review History" will show the comments by the editors, reviewers and the author as it went through the peer review process. The "About Us" menu provides details about this journal; "About the journal" under that tab includes the statement that the journal is peer reviewed.

Review articles

There are a variety of article types published in academic, peer-reviewed journals, but the two most common are original research articles and review articles . They can look very similar, but have different purposes and structures.

Like original research articles, review articles are aimed at scientists and undergo peer-review. Review articles often even have “abstract,” “introduction,” and “reference” sections. However, they will not (generally) have a “methods” or “results” section because they are not reporting new data or theories. Instead, they review the current state of knowledge on a topic.

Press releases, newspaper or magazine articles

These won't be in a formal scientific format or be peer reviewed. The author will usually be a journalist, and the audience will be the general public. Since most readers are not interested in the precise details of the research, the language will usually be nontechnical and broad. Citations will be rare or nonexistent.

Tips for Finding Original research Articles

Search for articles in one of the library databases recommend for your subject area . If you are using Google, try searching in Google Scholar instead and you will get results that are more likely to be original research articles than what will come up in a regular Google search!

For tips on using library databases to find articles, see our Library DIY guides .

Tips for Finding the Source of a News Report about Science

If you've seen or heard a report about a new scientific finding or claim, these tips can help you find the original source:

• Often, the report will mention where the original research was published; look for sentences like "In an article published yesterday in the journal  Nature ..." You can use this to find the issue of the journal where the research was published, and look at the table of contents to find the original article.
• The report will often name the researchers involved. You can search relevant databases for their name and the topic of the report to find the original research that way.
• Sometimes you may have to go through multiple articles to find the original source. For example, a video or blog post may be based on a newspaper article, which in turn is reporting on a scientific discovery published in another journal; be sure to find the original research article.
• Don't be afraid to ask a librarian for help!

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How to Find Research Articles

Last Updated: May 21, 2023 References

This article was co-authored by Kim Gillingham, MA and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Kim Gillingham is a retired library and information specialist with over 30 years of experience. She has a Master's in Library Science from Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, and she managed the audiovisual department of the district library center in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for 12 years. She continues to do volunteer work for various libraries and lending library projects in her local community. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 11,794 times.

If you need original research for a paper or other project, chances are you're going to be looking for scholarly journals. Most of these journals are digitized and available online. However, not all are available for free. Many are contained in databases that require a subscription to access. Once you've found a research article you think you might be able to use, you'll also want to make certain that the article you're reading is primary research. In the sciences, a primary research article discusses a study conducted by the authors of the article and the results of that study, rather than merely summarizing the findings of others. [1] X Research source

Using Free Academic Search Engines

• ScienceDirect ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/search ): covers all science and medical disciplines
• IEEE Xplore ( http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/guesthome.jsp ): covers computer sciences, electronics, and electrical engineering

Warning: Most academic search engines only provide you the link to a citation and abstract, not the full text of the article. However, you can read the abstract to determine if the article would be helpful for you.

• The guides will tell you how to search the most efficiently, including symbols and punctuation you can add to your searches to limit them and weed out unhelpful results.

• Read the abstract and any other information available about the article to find out if it might be of help to you. Then search the title in quotation marks. If the full text of the article is available on the internet, you'll be able to find it with this search.
• Keep in mind that this search will pull up any pages where the title of the article appears, many of which likely won't include the full text of the article. You may have to dig through a few links to find the full text.
• Some of the links you find will be to a subscription-based database with a paywall. These sites typically won't let you view more than the abstract for free.

Tip: As you're scrolling your search results, look for a link with a PDF extension. These are more likely to be the full text of the article.

• These browser extensions search the web for a full-text copy of the article on the internet. They don't "hack" subscription databases or allow you to access articles illegally. Rather, they search for free copies of the article that already exist.
• For example, the author of the article might have uploaded a PDF of the article on their own website or on their university faculty page. The browser extensions may help you find the article more quickly than you could on your own.

Accessing Scholarly Databases

• If you've already graduated, find out if you can get alumni access to scholarly databases.

Tip: If you're not affiliated with a college or university, talk to the research librarian at your public library. Public libraries often have scholarly database subscriptions as well.

• PubMed ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ ): offered by the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the US. Not all of the articles are free, but you can limit your search to full-text articles.
• Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) ( https://eric.ed.gov/ ): maintained by the Institution of Education Sciences in the US. Not all articles are free, but you can limit your search to full-text.
• NASA Scientific and Technical Information ( https://www.sti.nasa.gov/ ): Provides full-text scientific articles and data sets.

• CORE ( https://core.ac.uk/ ): more than 66 million open access scholarly articles
• ScienceOpen ( https://www.scienceopen.com/ ): more than 28 million articles across all science disciplines
• Directory of Open Access Journals ( https://doaj.org/ ): more than 2 million articles from 9,519 open access journals; multidisciplinary
• Public Library of Science (PLOS) ( https://www.plos.org/ ): publishes 7 open access journals in science fields

Identifying Articles about Primary Research

• The record frequently includes keywords and search terms. Some of these might give you an indication that the article presents original research. For example, one of the keywords or phrases might be "primary research" or "original research." Also, look for words that indicate something new was discovered as a result of the research.
• The title of the article can also help you figure out whether it presents original research. Look for scientific methodology words, such as "sample," which indicate a study was performed.

Tip: If you see an article with the word "review" in the title, it typically does not present original research. However, it does provide an overview and analysis of several studies on the same subject. You can use it to see if any of those studies would help you, then look for those articles.

• If the abstract is written in the first person, you can be assured that the author or authors of the article are going to be talking about a study they conducted themselves. However, many abstracts are written in passive voice to avoid using the first person.

Tip: Use the references to find other primary research articles that the author or authors relied upon when presenting their own findings.

• You can also use the charts and graphs to quickly evaluate the study and determine if the article would be beneficial for you in your paper or project.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

Expert Interview

Thanks for reading our article! If you’d like to learn more about research, check out our in-depth interview with Kim Gillingham, MA .

• ↑ https://suffolk.libguides.com/c.php?g=654047&p=4589820
• ↑ https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/competitions/finding-and-accessing-scientific-papers
• ↑ Jeremiah Kaplan. Research & Training Specialist. Expert Interview. 2 September 2021.
• ↑ Kim Gillingham, MA. Master's Degree, Library Science, Kutztown University. Expert Interview. 15 May 2019.
• ↑ https://umb.libguides.com/c.php?g=351041&p=2368605
• ↑ https://www.scribendi.com/advice/free_online_journal_and_research_databases.en.html
• ↑ http://umb.libanswers.com/faq/146414

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Identifying your research question

Making informed decisions about what to study, and defining your research question, even within a predetermined field, is critical to a successful research career, and can be one of the hardest challenges for a scientist.

Being knowledgeable about the state of your field and up-to-date with recent developments can help you:

• Make decisions about  what to study within niche research areas
• Identify  top researchers  in your field whose work you can follow and potentially collaborate with
• Find  important journals to read regularly and publish in
• Explain to others  why your work is important by being able to recount the bigger picture

How can you identify a research question?

Reading regularly is the most common way of identifying a good research question. This enables you to keep up to date with recent advancements and identify certain issues or unsolved problems that keep appearing.

Begin by searching for and reading literature in your field. Start with  general interest  journals, but don’t limit yourself to journal publications only; you can also look for clues in the news or on research blogs. Once you have identified a few interesting topics, you should be reading the table of contents of journals and the abstracts of most articles in that subject area. Papers that are directly related to your research you should read in their entirety.

TIP Keep an eye out for  Review papers and special issues in your chosen subject area as they are very helpful in discovering new areas and hot topics.

TIP: you can sign up to receive table of contents or notifications when articles are published in your field from most journals or publishers.

TIP: Joining a journal club is a great way to read and dissect published papers in and around your subject area. Usually consisting of 5-10 people from the same research group or institute they meet to evaluate the good and bad points of the research presented in the paper. This not only helps you keep up to date with the field but helps you become familiar with what is necessary for a good paper which can help when you come to write your own.

If possible, communicate with some of the authors of these manuscripts via email or in person. Going to conferences if possible is a great way to meet some of these authors. Often,  talking with the author  of an important work in your research area will give you more ideas than just reading the manuscript would.

Back │ Next

PubMed: Find Research Articles

• Run a Search
• Find Full Text
• Refine Searches
• Find Research Articles
• MeSH/Advanced Search
• Export to Citation Managers
• New PubMed Essentials

Finding Comparative Effectiveness Research

Comparative effectiveness research is the conduct and synthesis of research comparing the benefits and harms of different interventions and strategies to prevent, diagnose, treat and monitor health conditions in "real world" settings.

Two specialized resources are available to inform comparative effectiveness research:

Comparative Effectiveness Research  on the PubMed Topic-Specific Queries page. Provides specialized PubMed searches of published research and research in progress to help inform investigations of comparative effectiveness.

• Medline Plus  is the world’s largest medical library, it brings you information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in language you can understand. MedlinePlus offers reliable, up-to-date health information, anytime, anywhere, for free.

3 Ways to Find Research Articles in PubMed

1. filter (limit) to article type.

Most citations in PubMed are for journal articles. However, you may limit your retrieval based on the type of material the article represents. Use the Filters on the Results page sidebar and look at the Article Types checklist which contains a list of frequently searched publication types.

For example, choose Randomized Controlled Trial or Clinical Trial or Meta-Analysis from the list.

2. PubMed Clinical Queries 

Enter your search terms and evidence-filtered citations will appear under Clinical Study Categories. Systematic Reviews or Medical Genetics. The Clinical Queries link is found on the PubMed home page or under the More Resources drop-down at the top of the Advanced Search page.

The resulting retrieval in PubMed Clinical Queries can be further refined using PubMed's Filters, e.g., English language, humans.

3. Limit to Articles with Structured Abstracts

Many abstracts that are added to PubMed include section labels such as BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVE, METHODS, RESULTS, and CONCLUSIONS. These 'structured' abstracts appear in many different article types such as review articles, original research, and practice guidelines and facilitate skimming of citations for relevance and specific information such as research design within the Methods section.  The presence of structured abstracts in citations are a searchable feature in PubMed.  To limit to citations containing structured abstracts, include the term hasstructuredabstract in the search box.

For example: valerian AND sleep AND hasstructuredabstract

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Library Research at Cornell: Find Articles

• The Research Steps
• Which Topic?
• Find the Context
• Find Articles
• Evaluate Sources
• Cite Sources
• Review the Steps
• Find Primary Sources
• Find Images
• Library Jargon

Tips for Finding Articles

• Use online databases to find articles in journals, newspapers, and magazines (periodicals). You can search for periodical articles by the article author, title, or keyword by using databases in your subject area in Databases .
• Choose the database best suited to your particular topic--see details in the box below.
• Use our Ask a Librarian service for help for figuring out which databases are best for your topic.
• If the article full text is not linked from the citation in the database you are using, search for the title of the periodical in our Catalog . This catalog lists the print, microform, and electronic versions of journals, magazines, and newspapers available in the library.

Finding Periodicals and Periodical Articles

Topic outline for this page:

• What Are Periodicals?

Finding the Periodical When You Do Have the Article Citation

• Locating Periodicals in Olin and Uris Libraries

Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals

• Evaluating Individual Periodical Titles

What are Periodicals?

Periodicals are continuing publications such as journals, newspapers, or magazines. They are issued regularly (daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly).

The Cornell Library Catalog includes records for all the periodicals which are received by all the individual units of the Cornell University Library (Music Library, Mann Library, Law Library, Uris Library, etc.).

The Cornell Library Catalog does not include information on individual articles in periodicals. To find individual periodical articles by subject, article author, or article title, use periodical databases .

When you know the periodical title ( Scientific American, The New York Times, Newsweek ) search the Cornell Library Catalog by journal title .

Finding Articles When You Don't Have the Citation

To find an article, use databases.

When you don't have the citation to a specific article, but you do want to find articles on a subject, by a specific author or authors, or with a known article title, you need to use one or more periodical databases . But how do you know which periodical index to use?

What kind of periodicals are you looking for?

• scholarly journals?
• newspapers and substantive news sources?
• popular magazines?
• all three kinds?

[ Learn how to identify scholarly journals, news sources, and popular magazines. ]

If you want articles from scholarly, research, peer-reviewed journals , ask a reference librarian to recommend an index/database for your topic. Some databases index journals exclusively, like America: History and Life , EconLit , Engineering Village , MLA Bibliography , PsycINFO , PubMed , and Web of Science . Google Scholar searches across all scholarly disciplines and subjects. You can also use the subject menu in Databases linked from the library home page to locate databases that index scholarly publications.

If you want newspaper articles , see this guide to newspaper indexes and full-text newspaper databases . Online databases for finding newspaper articles are listed here: News Collections Online: News Databases .

If you want popular magazines , use Academic Search Premier or ProQuest Research Library . A printed index, Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature covering popular magazines from 1890 to 2011 is found in the Olin reference collection (Olin Reference AI 3 .R28).

The online index Reader's Guide Retrospective indexes popular magazines from 1890 to 1982 online. Periodical Contents Index covers some popular magazines for an even broader time period: 1770 to 1993.

If you want an index to all three kinds of articles, use Academic Search Premier or ProQuest Research Library . To find older articles, try Periodical Contents Index ; it indexes periodicals from 1770 to 1993.

If you want to search many databases simultaneously , use Articles & Full Text , also linked from the Library home page .

• If you're not sure which kind of periodical you want or you're not sure which periodical index to use, or if you want help searching, ask a reference librarian .

Remember you can always browse the titles of online periodical databases available online by clicking on this link to the subject categories in the Databases or on the Databases link in the search box on the Library home page .

When You Have a Citation to a Specific Article, Use the Cornell Library Catalog

When you do have the citation or reference to a periodical article--if you know at least the title of the periodical and the issue date of the article you want--you can find its location at Cornell by using the Cornell Library Catalog . Choose "Journal Title" in the drop-down menu to the right of the search box, click in the search box, type in the title of the periodical in the search box, and press <enter> . Don't use the abbreviated titles that are often used in periodical indexes; remember to omit "a," "an" or "the" when you type in the periodical title.

Search examples in the Cornell Library Catalog:

* When searching for the title, Journal of Modern History

Type the following in the search box: journal of modern history

* When searching for the title, Annales Musicologiques: Moyen-Age et Renaissance

You may type the following: annales musicologiques moyen age (Omit punctuation) (searching is not case sensitive)

Depending on the number of records your search retrieves, you will see either a list of entries or a single record for an individual periodical title. If there is a list of titles, scroll through it and click on the line that lists the journal title you want to see for the call number and location information or the online link(s).

If the journal is available in electronic form , there will be a link or links int the box labelled "Availability" in the catalog record. Click on this link. In most cases, this will take you to the opening screen for the journal, and you can choose the issue you want from there.

If the journal is available in print form , record the call number and any additional location information in the catalog record. Now you're ready to find it on the shelf. Consult the local stack directory for the call number locations in individual libraries.

Locating Print Periodicals in Olin and Uris Libraries

Current periodicals:.

Periodicals noted as "Current issues in Periodicals Room" in the Cornell Library Catalog are print journals shelved by title in the Current Periodicals Room on the main level in Olin Library. This room is immediately to the right and down the hall as you enter Olin Library. Only a small selection of current print periodicals is in this room : all other current periodical issues go directly to the Olin stacks where they are shelved by call number.

Back Issues of Periodicals

Back issues of periodicals are shelved by call number in the Olin and Uris Library stacks. Some back periodicals are shelved in specific subject rooms; watch for location notes in the Cornell Library Catalog record for the title you want.

Pay attention to the + and ++ indicators by the call number. Titles with the + and ++ (Oversize) designations and titles with no plus marks are each shelved in separate sections on each floor in Olin Library and separate floors in Uris Library.

Back issues on microfilm, microfiche, and microprint are housed on the lower or B Level in Olin Library.

Journals, news publications, and magazines are important sources for up-to-date information across a wide variety of topics. With a collection as large and diverse as Cornell's it is often difficult to distinguish between the various levels of scholarship found in the collection. In this guide we have divided the criteria for evaluating periodical literature into four categories:

• Scholarly  /  VIDEO: How to Identify Scholarly Journal Articles
• Substantive News and General Interest  /  VIDEO: How to Identify Substantive News Articles
• Sensational and Tabloid

Definitions:

Webster's Third International Dictionary defines scholarly as:

• concerned with academic study, especially research,
• exhibiting the methods and attitudes of a scholar, and
• having the manner and appearance of a scholar.

Substantive is defined as having a solid base, being substantial.

Popular means fit for, or reflecting the taste and intelligence of, the people at large.

Sensational is defined as arousing or intending to arouse strong curiosity, interest or reaction.

Keeping these definitions in mind, and realizing that none of the lines drawn between types of journals can ever be totally clear cut, the general criteria are as follows.

Scholarly journals are also called academic, peer-reviewed, or refereed journals . Strictly speaking, peer-reviewed (also called refereed) journals refer only to those scholarly journals that submit articles to several other scholars, experts, or academics (peers) in the field for review and comment. These reviewers must agree that the article represents properly conducted original research or writing before it can be published.

To check if a journal is peer-reviewed/refereed, search the journal by title in Ulrich's Periodical Directory --look for the referee jersey icon.

What to look for:

• Scholarly journal articles often have an abstract, a descriptive summary of the article contents, before the main text of the article.
• Scholarly journals generally have a sober, serious look. They often contain many graphs and charts but few glossy pages or exciting pictures.
• Scholarly journals always cite their sources in the form of footnotes or bibliographies. These bibliographies are generally lengthy and cite other scholarly writings.
• Articles are written by a scholar in the field or by someone who has done research in the field. The affiliations of the authors are listed, usually at the bottom of the first page or at the end of the article--universities, research institutions, think tanks, and the like.
• The language of scholarly journals is that of the discipline covered. It assumes some technical background on the part of the reader.
• The main purpose of a scholarly journal is to report on original research or experimentation in order to make such information available to the rest of the scholarly world.
• Many scholarly journals, though by no means all, are published by a specific professional organization.

Examples of Scholarly Journals:

• American Economic Review
• Applied Geography
• Archives of Sexual Behavior
• JAMA : The Journal of the American Medical Association
• Journal of Marriage and the Family (published by the National Council on Family Relations)
• Journal of Theoretical Biology
• Modern Fiction Studies

Substantive News or General Interest

These periodicals may be quite attractive in appearance, although some are in newspaper format. Articles are often heavily illustrated, generally with photographs.

News and general interest periodicals sometimes cite sources, though more often do not.

Articles may be written by a member of the editorial staff, a scholar or a free lance writer.

The language of these publications is geared to any educated audience. There is no specialty assumed, only interest and a certain level of intelligence.

They are generally published by commercial enterprises or individuals, although some emanate from specific professional organizations.

The main purpose of periodicals in this category is to provide information, in a general manner, to a broad audience of concerned citizens.

Examples of Substantive News and General Interest Periodicals:

• The Economist
• National Geographic
• The New York Times
• Scientific American
• Vital Speeches of the Day

Popular periodicals come in many formats, although often slick and attractive in appearance with lots of color graphics (photographs, drawings, etc.).

These publications do not cite sources in a bibliography. Information published in popular periodicals is often second or third hand and the original source is rarely mentioned.

Articles are usually very short and written in simple language.

The main purpose of popular periodicals is to entertain the reader, to sell products (their own or their advertisers), or to promote a viewpoint.

Examples of Popular Periodicals:

• People Weekly
• Readers Digest
• Sports Illustrated

Sensational or Tabloid

Sensational periodicals come in a variety of styles, but often use a newspaper format.

Their language is elementary and occasionally inflammatory. They assume a certain gullibility in their audience.

The main purpose of sensational magazines seems to be to arouse curiosity and to cater to popular superstitions. They often do so with flashy headlines designed to astonish (e.g., Half-man Half-woman Makes Self Pregnant).

Examples of Sensational Periodicals:

• National Examiner
• Weekly World News

Evaluating Periodicals: Magazines for Libraries

Magazines for Libraries describes and evaluates journals, magazines, and newspapers:

Or ask for assistance at the reference desk .

Reference Help

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Answered By: Jon Allinder Last Updated: Jan 27, 2022     Views: 7733

You can find research articles in most of the Library databases by including the keyword research in your search.

• On the  Library homepage , type your main concept in the search box, and click on Search.  For example: online education  
• If prompted, log in with your Walden credentials.

The search set up should look like this: 

In the first search box

online education

In the second search box

research  

• Click on the  Search  button to run your search.
• Once you have your search results, you can click in the box for Peer Reviewed Scholarly Journals Only in the Refine Results section on the side of the page.
• Checking the peer review box will automatically update the search. As you look through the articles, check to make sure the article you choose does in fact report on research the author(s) did.

More Information:

• Evaluating Resources Guide
• Database Search Skills Guide
• Peer Review Guide
• How do I find articles on my topic?
• How do I find an article that reports on research that uses a specific methodology?

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Where to Find The Hypothesis in a Research Article

The question of “Where to Find The Hypothesis in a Research Article” can only be answered by exploring how research articles represent scientific methods.

Table of Contents

Introduction

A research article represents a compilation of information by a scientist concerning an original research idea. It is characterized by a wide range of information including, the purpose of the study, the thesis statement, hypothesis, literature review, methodology, results and conclusion.

The examination of a research article is an important process, and the ability to identify crucial elements of research is paramount for the effective analysis of a research article.

Research articles are usually arranged in specific ways. A hypothesis in a research article is usually located in a specific position in an article. The ability to quickly pinpoint where the hypothesis is located is crucial in becoming an expert in exploring research articles as well as formulating them.

What is a hypothesis

A hypothesis represents a scientific guess that is stated in research. It is a speculative statement concerning the relationship between two or more variables in research.

Therefore, a good hypothesis is a prediction that is testable, specific, and explores what a researcher expects to find in the study.

Formulating a Hypothesis

The creation of a hypothesis represents a critical part of the scientific method. Formulating a hypothesis is important, especially when testing a theory. Most scientific research involves testing theories. Theories, in this case, refer to ideas about the way things relate to one another. For one to formulate a hypothesis to be used in research, they have to be to predict the outcome of the research.

If one cannot predict the outcome, then the research does not need the formulating of a hypothesis because it is either exploratory or descriptive. These forms of research cannot have a hypothesis, and the reason is that there is a limited base of knowledge concerning the subject matter for the prediction of the outcome to be possible.

A good Hypothesis

A good hypothesis has to have two or more variables. These variables have to be measurable or have the potential to be measured. The hypothesis also has to specify how the variables are related to one another.

Where to Find the Hypothesis in a Research Article

The scientific method is characterized by several steps. They include:

• Coming up with a question or the problem that needs to be solved.
• Conducting background research on the problem
• Formulating a hypothesis
• Establishing how the research will be conducted using a research design
• Collecting data
• Analyzing the data and coming up with results
• Provide conclusions
• Presenting the information through a research article.

Based on the above structure, it is evident that the hypothesis is located in the introduction section of a research article. One should look out for “if-then” statements. However, for such statements to be hypotheses, they need to:

• Demonstrates the relationship between variables,
• The relationship needs to be testable and
• The prediction needs to be measurable

A hypothesis is not always clearly labeled. This means that the statement can appear in different forms apart from when formulated using the “if-then” statements. One should, therefore, look out for a statement that offers a prediction of what readers need to expect from the research.

The ability to identify where to find a hypothesis is located in a research article is very important in several ways:

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A bird flu outbreak is spreading among cows in the US. Scientists are hunting for answers

Welcome to the National Animal Disease Center, a government research center in Iowa where scientists work with pigs, cows and other animals, pushing to solve the bird flu outbreak currently spreading through U.S. animals — and develop ways to stop it. (AP Video/Mary Conlon)

Dairy cows stand in a field outside of a milking barn at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

A large animal containment building is seen on the campus of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

A cow stands in a feeding pen at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

A cow stands in a field at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Calves stand in a pen at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

A high-containment laboratory building is seen at the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa, on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Vaccinated calves stand in a pen in a large animal containment building at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

In this photo provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, animal care staff prepare to collect a blood sample from a dairy calf vaccinated against bird flu in a containment building at the National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (USDA Agricultural Research Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an animal caretaker collects a blood sample from a dairy calf vaccinated against bird flu in a containment building at the National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (USDA Agricultural Research Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a dairy cow is milked before inoculation against bird flu in a containment building at the National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Friday, July 19, 2024. (USDA Agricultural Research Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a researcher performs a rapid antigen test on milk from a dairy cow inoculated against bird flu in a containment building at the National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa, on Monday, July 29, 2024. (USDA Agricultural Research Service via AP)

Amy Baker speaks in a lab at the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa, on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024. In addition to vaccines, she and other researchers also have been working on studies in which they try to see how the virus spreads between cows. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

A sign stands outside of the National Centers for Animal Health campus in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

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AMES, Iowa (AP) — At first glance, it looks like an unassuming farm. Cows are scattered across fenced-in fields. A milking barn sits in the distance with a tractor parked alongside. But the people who work there are not farmers, and other buildings look more like what you’d find at a modern university than in a cow pasture.

Welcome to the National Animal Disease Center, a government research facility in Iowa where 43 scientists work with pigs, cows and other animals, pushing to solve the bird flu outbreak currently spreading through U.S. animals — and develop ways to stop it.

Vaccinated calves stand in a pen in a large animal containment building at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center research facility in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Particularly important is the testing of a cow vaccine designed to stop the continued spread of the virus — thereby, hopefully, reducing the risk that it will someday become a widespread disease in people.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture facility opened in 1961 in Ames, a college town about 45 minutes north of Des Moines. The center is located on a pastoral, 523-acre (212-hectare) site a couple of miles east of Ames’ low-slung downtown.

It’s a quiet place with a rich history. Through the years, researchers there developed vaccines against various diseases that endanger pigs and cattle, including hog cholera and brucellosis. And work there during the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009 — known at the time as “swine flu” — proved the virus was confined to the respiratory tract of pigs and that pork was safe to eat.

The center has the unusual resources and experience to do that kind of work, said Richard Webby, a prominent flu researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

“That’s not a capacity that many places in the U.S. have,” said Webby, who has been collaborating with the Ames facility on the cow vaccine work.

The campus has 93 buildings, including a high-containment laboratory building whose exterior is reminiscent of a modern megachurch but inside features a series of compartmentalized corridors and rooms, some containing infected animals. That’s where scientists work with more dangerous germs, including the H5N1 bird flu. There’s also a building with three floors of offices that houses animal disease researchers as well as a testing center that is a “for animals” version of the CDC labs in Atlanta that identify rare (and sometimes scary) new human infections.

About 660 people work at the campus — roughly a third of them assigned to the animal disease center, which has a $38 million annual budget. They were already busy with a wide range of projects but grew even busier this year after the H5N1 bird flu unexpectedly jumped into U.S. dairy cows.

“It’s just amazing how people just dig down and make it work,” said Mark Ackermann, the center’s director.

An animal caretaker collects a blood sample from a dairy calf vaccinated against bird flu in a containment building at the National Animal Disease Center research facility. (USDA Agricultural Research Service via AP)

The virus was first identified in 1959 and grew into a widespread and highly lethal menace to migratory birds and domesticated poultry. Meanwhile, the virus evolved, and in the past few years has been detected in a growing number of animals ranging from dogs and cats to sea lions and polar bears.

Despite the spread in different animals, scientists were still surprised this year when infections were suddenly detected in cows — specifically, in the udders and milk of dairy cows. It’s not unusual for bacteria to cause udder infections, but a flu virus?

“Typically we think of influenza as being a respiratory disease,” said Kaitlyn Sarlo Davila, a researcher at the Ames facility.

Much of the research on the disease has been conducted at a USDA poultry research center in Athens, Georgia, but the appearance of the virus in cows pulled the Ames center into the mix.

Amy Baker, a researcher who has won awards for her research on flu in pigs, is now testing a vaccine for cows. Preliminary results are expected soon, she said.

Amy Baker speaks in a lab at the National Animal Disease Center. In addition to vaccines, she and other researchers also have been working on studies in which they try to see how the virus spreads between cows. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

USDA spokesperson Shilo Weir called the work promising but early in development. There is not yet an approved bird flu vaccine being used at U.S. poultry farms, and Weir said that while poultry vaccines are being pursued, any such strategy would be challenging and would not be guaranteed to eliminate the virus.

Baker and other researchers also have been working on studies in which they try to see how the virus spreads between cows. That work is going on in the high-containment building, where scientists and animal caretakers don specialized respirators and other protective equipment.

The research exposed four yearling heifers to a virus-carrying mist and then squirted the virus into the teats and udders of two lactating cows. The first four cows got infected but had few symptoms. The second two got sicker — suffering diminished appetite, a drop in milk production and producing thick, yellowish milk.

In this photo provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a dairy cow is milked before inoculation against bird flu in a containment building at the National Animal Disease Center research facility. (USDA Agricultural Research Service via AP)

The conclusion that the virus mainly spread through exposure to milk containing high levels of the virus — which could then spread through shared milking equipment or other means — was consistent with what health investigators understood to be going on. But it was important to do the work because it has sometimes been difficult to get complete information from dairy farms, Webby said.

“At best we had some good hunches about how the virus was circulating, but we didn’t really know,” he added.

USDA scientists are doing additional work, checking the blood of calves that drank raw milk for signs of infection.

A study conducted by the Iowa center and several universities concluded that the virus was likely circulating for months before it was officially reported in Texas in March.

The study also noted a new and rare combination of genes in the bird flu virus that spilled over into the cows, and researchers are sorting out whether that enabled it to spread to cows, or among cows, said Tavis Anderson, who helped lead the work.

Either way, the researchers in Ames expect to be busy for years.

“Do they (cows) have their own unique influenzas? Can it go from a cow back into wild birds? Can it go from a cow into a human? Cow into a pig?” Anderson added. “Understanding those dynamics, I think, is the outstanding research question — or one of them.”

A cow stands in a feeding pen at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center research facility. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Stobbe reported from New York.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Major Market Shift As Week Ends Strong!

Mary Ellen McGonagle

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The Zacks Rank Explained: How to Find Strong Buy Transportation Stocks

Whether you're a growth, value, income, or momentum-focused investor, building a successful investment portfolio takes skill, research, and a little bit of luck.

But what's the best way to find the right combination of stocks? Because funding things like your retirement, your kids' college tuition, or your short- and long-term savings goals will definitely require significant returns.

Enter the Zacks Rank.

What is the Zacks Rank?

A unique, proprietary stock-rating model, the Zacks Rank uses earnings estimate revisions, or changes to a company's earnings expectations, to help investors create a winning portfolio.

There are four main factors behind the Zacks Rank: Agreement, Magnitude, Upside, and Surprise.

Agreement is the extent to which all brokerage analysts are revising their earnings estimates in the same direction. The greater the percentage of analysts revising their estimates higher, the better chance the stock will outperform.

Magnitude is the size of the recent change in the consensus estimate for the current and next fiscal years.

Upside is the difference between the most accurate estimate, which is calculated by Zacks, and the consensus estimate.

Surprise is made up of a company's last few quarters' earnings per share surprises; companies with a positive earnings surprise are more likely to beat expectations in the future.

These four factors are assigned a raw score that's recalculated every night, which is then compiled into the ranking system. Stocks are classified into five groups using this data, ranging from "Strong Buy" to "Strong Sell."

The Power of Institutional Investors

The Zacks Rank also allows individual investors, or retail investors, to benefit from the power of institutional investors.

Institutional investors are responsible for managing the trillions of dollars invested in mutual funds, hedge funds, and investment banks. Research has shown that these investors can and do move the market due to the large amount of money they deal with, and thus, the market tends to move in the same direction as them.

In order to figure out the fair value of a company and its shares, these investors will build valuation models focused on earnings and earnings expectations. Because if you raise estimates for the bottom line, it creates a higher fair value for a company.

Institutional investors then act on these changes in earnings estimates, typically buying stocks with rising estimates and selling those with falling estimates; an increase in earnings estimates can translate into higher stock prices and bigger gains for the investor.

Retail investors who get in at the first sign of upward revisions have a distinct advantage over larger investors since it can often take weeks, if not months, for an institutional investor to build a position. They'll also benefit from the expected institutional buying that could follow.

Not only can the Zacks Rank help you take advantage of trends in earnings estimate revisions, but it can also provide a way to get into stocks that are highly sought after by professionals.

How to Invest with the Zacks Rank

The Zacks Rank is known for transforming investment portfolios. In fact, a portfolio of Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks has beaten the market in 26 of the last 32 years, with an average annual return of +25.41%.

Moreover, stocks with a new #1 (Strong Buy) ranking have some of the biggest profit potential, while those that fell to a #4 (Sell) or #5 (Strong Sell) have some of the worst.

Let's take a look at

C.H. Robinson Worldwide ( CHRW Quick Quote CHRW - Free Report )

Based in Minnesota, C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. is a third-party logistics company. As a asset-light transportation provider, C.H. Robinson provides freight transportation services and logistic solutions to companies across a range of industries. The company's services range from commitments on a specific shipment to more comprehensive and integrated relationships.

For fiscal 2024, nine analysts revised their earnings estimate upwards in the last 60 days, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate has increased $0.48 to $4.07 per share. CHRW boasts an average earnings surprise of 7.3%.

Earnings are forecasted to see growth of 23.3% for the current fiscal year, and sales are expected to increase 1.9%.

Even more impressive, CHRW has gained in value over the past four weeks, up 11.6% compared to the S&P 500's gain of 2.2%.

Bottom Line

With a #1 (Strong Buy) ranking, positive trend in earnings estimate revisions, and strong market momentum, C.H. Robinson Worldwide should be on investors' shortlist.

If you want even more information on the Zacks Ranks, or one of our many other investing strategies, check out the Zacks Education home page .

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Research links high levels of fluoride in drinking water to lower iqs in children.

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A U.S. government report expected to stir debate concluded that fluoride in drinking water at twice the recommended limit is linked with lower IQ in children.

The report, based on an analysis of previously published research, marks the first time a federal agency has determined — “with moderate confidence” — that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. While the report was not designed to evaluate the health effects of fluoride in drinking water alone, it is a striking acknowledgment of a potential neurological risk from high levels of fluoride.

Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.

“I think this (report) is crucial in our understanding” of this risk, said Ashley Malin, a University of Florida researcher who has studied the affect of higher fluoride levels in pregnant women on their children. She called it the most rigorously conducted report of its kind.

The long-awaited report released Wednesday comes from the National Toxicology Program, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. It summarizes a review of studies, conducted in Canada, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Mexico, that concludes that drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter is consistently associated with lower IQs in kids.

The report did not try to quantify exactly how many IQ points might be lost at different levels of fluoride exposure. But some of the studies reviewed in the report suggested IQ was 2 to 5 points lower in children who'd had higher exposures.

Since 2015, federal health officials have recommended a fluoridation level of 0.7 milligrams per liter of water, and for five decades before the recommended upper range was 1.2. The World Health Organization has set a safe limit for fluoride in drinking water of 1.5.

The report said that about 0.6% of the U.S. population — about 1.9 million people — are on water systems with naturally occurring fluoride levels of 1.5 milligrams or higher.

“The findings from this report raise the questions about how these people can be protected and what makes the most sense,” Malin said.

The 324-page report did not reach a conclusion about the risks of lower levels of fluoride, saying more study is needed. It also did not answer what high levels of fluoride might do to adults.

The American Dental Association, which champions water fluoridation, had been critical of earlier versions of the new analysis and Malin’s research. Asked for comment, a spokeswoman late Wednesday afternoon emailed that the organization’s experts were still reviewing the report.

Fluoride is a mineral that exists naturally in water and soil. About 80 years ago, scientists discovered that people whose supplies naturally had more fluoride also had fewer cavities, triggering a push to get more Americans to use fluoride for better dental health.

In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first U.S. city to start adding fluoride to tap water. In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.

Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in U.S. kids.

Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency has maintained a longstanding requirement that water systems cannot have more than 4 milligrams of fluoride per liter. That standard is designed to prevent skeletal fluorosis, a potentially crippling disorder which causes weaker bones, stiffness and pain.

But more and more studies have increasingly pointed to a different problem, suggesting a link between higher levels of fluoride and brain development. Researchers wondered about the impact on developing fetuses and very young children who might ingest water with baby formula. Studies in animals showed fluoride could impact neurochemistry cell function in brain regions responsible for learning, memory, executive function and behavior.

In 2006, the National Research Council, a private nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., said limited evidence from China pointed to neurological effects in people exposed to high levels of fluoride. It called for more research into the effect of fluoride on intelligence.

After more research continued to raise questions, the National Toxicology Program in 2016 started working on a review of the available studies that could provide guidance on whether new fluoride-limiting measures were needed.

There were earlier drafts but the final document has repeatedly been held up. At one point, a committee of experts said available research did not support an earlier draft's conclusions.

“Since fluoride is such an important topic to the public and to public health officials, it was imperative that we made every effort to get the science right,” said Rick Woychik, director of the National Toxicology Program, in a statement.

Malin said it makes sense for pregnant women to lower their fluoride intake, not only from water but also from certain types of tea. It might also make sense to have policy discussions about whether to require fluoride-content on beverage labels, she said.