AP Research
Explore, design, plan, and conduct a year-long, research-based investigation to address a research question

Recommended Academic Databases

Be sure to utilize the advanced search tools to combine terms, narrow by date, and limit to peer-reviewed or full-text articles.

Link to access All Creek Library Databases

Link for Remote Access

How to search academic databases

Avoid Natural Language

Stick to keywords and phrases - don't write out questions in full.

Use Quotation Marks Around Phrases

This ensures your search results will include the phrase, not the individual words found separately in the document.

Use the Advanced Search

It will be located in different places depending on the database, but it will help refine and improve your search.

Use Limiters Provided by the Database to Narrow/Focus Your Results

Limiters are usually found on the left or right-hand side of your search results.
Limit by source type, date of publication, reading level, subject, publication, and more

Use Boolean Operators

AND: Narrows your search by requiring all connected terms to appear in the results.

Example: cats AND dogs finds records that mention both animals.

OR: Broadens your search by finding results that contain at least one of the connected synonyms or terms.

Example: cats OR kitties OR felines finds records with any of those words.

NOT: Narrows your search by excluding specific words or unwanted terms.

Example: cats NOT dogs finds records about cats but removes any that also mention dogs.

Or use a browser to search
keyword + site:scientificamerican.com

Periodicals

AllSides: Balanced News

The Atlantic--Full-text articles can be accessed through .mycherrycreek while on campus

Colorado Politics

Denver Post (and other CO newspapers)
Please contact the library for an access code.

JSTOR Daily

Journalist's Resource: Research on Today's News Topics

The New York Times

Directions for creating a NYT

The New York Times-Academic Pass: use this link to create a complimentary account

RealClearPolitics

The Wall Street Journal - Directions for accessing the WSJ subscription can be found on our Remote Logins and Passwords link

World News Digest

Academic and Journalistic Articles

Open Access Sources

PubMed: PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature with the aim of improving health–both globally and personally.

The PubMed database contains more than 30 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. It does not include full-text journal articles; however, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources, such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC). (Description from PubMed site)

PLOS ONE: Full-text open access articles covering multiple subject areas

MDPI: Includes approximately 420 peer-reviewed journals and nine conference journals

Frontiers: 221 OA Journals

Open Access Sage Journals: OA journals published by Sage. All are peer reviewed.

Pew Research Center: Nonpartisan organization that conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research.

Library of Congress: The largest library in the world with more than 162 million items, including books, sound recordings, motion pictures, photographs, maps, and manuscripts. The LOC serves as the research arm of Congress.

National Archives: The nation's record keeper- Contains documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States federal government

Science.gov: Authoritative federal science information

Smithsonian: Smithsonian Libraries offers educational resources and digital collections from 21 specialized research libraries. Features RESEARCH TOOLS, a portal that allows you to search their collection of journals and books.

Digital Public Library of America: Features photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and more, from America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.

GREAT FOR: Primary Sources from History

Professional fact-checkers do something called lateral reading.

Lateral reading requires opening up another tab to seek information about the webpage you are evaluating. Lateral reading is essential to determining who is behind the information.

Vertical reading is exploring a webpage vertically (up and down) to check things like the date, about section, etc. This will not provide all the information you need to determine if something is trustworthy.

Here is a study that demonstrates the importance of lateral reading.
Here is an article about the meaninglessness of the .org domain.

Use these fact-checking sites to read laterally.

Preprints and Unpublished works are NOT peer-reviewed.

Additionally, ResearchGate faces widespread criticism. Read more here.

Google Scholar Search Help

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 a 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, see 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 the author's name and see what else they have written.