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Astronomy 100 - Survey of Astronomy - Unheard Voices (Smaglik)

Research Databases

Research Databases may not be the most interesting topic in the world but understanding them and using them in your academic career, and beyond, will save you a lot of time and frustration.  We are going to talk about the following:

             Research Databases, definition

Filters and Boolean Operators (how to search and not get a bunch of stuff you don’t want)

             Selected Databases for Your Assignment

             Citations (it’s as easy as one CLICK)

One-Search Library Catalog (if you like to start big and filter down to what you want)

Research Databases, definition

A Research Database is similar to Google except that companies, such as EBSCO, ProQuest, and Gale have collected many different types of resources and put them all in one place, searchable by topic or subject, making it easier to search, locate, and use these resources in assignments. 

Type of resources you can access are:

  1. Full-text articles from popular and scholarly magazines, journals, and newspapers
  2. Peer-reviewed articles:  In academic publishing, the goal of peer review is to assess the quality of articles submitted for publication in a scholarly journal. Before an article is deemed appropriate to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, it must undergo the following process:
  • The author of the article must submit it to the journal editor who forwards the article to experts in the field. Because the reviewers specialize in the same scholarly area as the author, they are considered the author’s peers (hence “peer review”).
  • These impartial reviewers are charged with carefully evaluating the quality of the submitted manuscript.
  • The peer reviewers check the manuscript for accuracy and assess the validity of the research methodology and procedures.
  • If appropriate, they suggest revisions. If they find the article lacking in scholarly validity and rigor, they reject it.

Because a peer-reviewed journal will not publish articles that fail to meet the standards established for a given discipline, peer-reviewed articles that are accepted for publication exemplify the best research practices in a field (San Diego State University, Peer-Reviewed Articles)

  1. eBooks, such as encyclopedias, biographies, and specialized resources by topic
  2. Media, such as audiobooks, videos, photographs and images, archives, transcripts, etc.

Filters and Boolean Operators (how to search and not get a bunch of stuff you don’t want)

Knowing how to search for what you are looking for is a lot easier than trying to figure out where to begin with 313,856 results.  Who has the time!  Using filters and Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT…that kind of thing) will help shrink your results from 313,856 to hopefully under 100.  Now that is doable!

See the source image

ResearchGate (accessed 5-6-22)

The following short videos are the best place to start before you head in to one of the databases.  Trust me.

How to Use Filters (or how not to look at 5,000 pairs of jeans in Amazon)

Understanding and Using Operators (don’t ask me why they have such a funny name)