Horowitz: ENL110: Finding Journal Articles

• Though you will express your own insights and opinions in your op-ed, you want the op-ed to be based on your own careful weighing of evidence from:
  • scholarly articles
  • fact-based general magazine articles
  • fact-based professional trade articles
  • statistical reports
• You do not want to include other people's opinions in your research:
  • letters to the editor
  • editorials
  • op-eds
  • argumentative pieces with points of view
• How to do this?
  • Use "Advanced Search" templates in databases to limit source types to articles, reports, case studies, etc.

• For example:

Go to the "Advanced Search" template for your database.

• Select factual types of sources in the drop down menu for "Source Types"
• You often have to conduct separate searches for each source type.
  • In Academic Search Complete, you might limit your results to articles, book chapters, case studies, and reports.
  • You will not select editorials, letters to the editor, etc.
• For example:

• Limiting searches to "Article"  in Academic Search Complete:

• It's really important that you do not set up your database search to include phrases and words that signify opinions.
• This will likely retrieve opinion pieces.
• For example 
  • Suppose your Op-Ed Topic is;
    • Pros and cons of requiring the wearing of masks in schools
    • Schools should not require the wearing of masks in schools
    • Schools should require wearing of masks in schools
  • How to set up your search to leave other people's arguments out;
    • schools and masks and covid
  • What you will not search for:
    • pros and cons of wearing masks in schools to prevent covid
    • benefits and disadvantages of wearing masks in schools
    • masks do not prevent students from getting covid