Science through Inquiry: Articles

Researching in the Sciences can be a bit different than research you've done in other classes. Most scientific research you use should be recent (within 5 years).  Here are a few tips to help you find worthwhile things:

• Use the Internet-- You may be able to find recent research and new discoveries on the World Wide Web. Instead of just using Google, go to scholar.google.com first. 


• Always read carefully -- As you read reports, blogs, articles, etc... Look for words that will point you in the right direction for other research (i.e. "An article in Science states..." -- Go and find that article!


• Bibliographic Mining -- Look at the bibliographies of the materials you already have.  This is a  great place to find additional resources that will be helpful to your paper.  Looking at the citation information of the bibliography, you can usually determine from where that source originates.

When book information is too broad and general, articles in electronic databases can provide more narrow, subject-specific information.

The following are excellent first-stop databases for nearly any research topic.

National Papers-- Well reputed national newspapers often will discuss and unpack scientific breakthroughs and experiments. Two of the more famous ones are listed below: