• Journals are often peer-reviewed/scholarly. This means the research in the articles have been double-checked for validity.
• Primary research often appears in journal articles. Primary research is the first article or report on a topic whereas secondary research are the articles or reports that talk about that primary article. Always look back to the primary article when using secondary sources as support.
• Journals can contain the most recent information on a topic. In the sciences this can be very important.
Basic process for finding articles
If you find an article that looks interesting check to see if there is a link to the pdf or HTML version of the article by the citation. If not, then click the "Get It!" button to see if we have access to it either electronically or in print.
Requesting articles we do not own
If we have neither print nor electronic access to an article in our collection, then you can place an order for it through ILLIAD.
You will have to set up account the first time you order an article but once you have done this once you can use this same account each time you want an article.
Once you have an account set up then you can just click the "ILLIAD" link in the "Get it!" button and log into your account and the request form will be automatically populated with the citation information for your desired article so you only need to submit the request.
(If you do not have a journal citation, but instead have a topic, use one of our databases to locate citations).
Enter your search:
This box searches journal and newspaper titles only. Use JumpStart to search for specific articles.