14.3: Conducting General Internet Research

If you are new to research, your first instinct might be to perform a quick Google search and click on the first Wikipedia page you spot. This is not a terrible place to start, as you might just want some basic information about your topic to help you determine which specific aspects of it you are interested in exploring further, but it is important that you move beyond these initial avenues as your research progresses

As you’ve probably heard a thousand times from previous instructors, Wikipedia is not a credible source for formal academic research because it is subject to editing and manipulation from a variety of internet users who may or may not actually be qualified to speak on the subject at hand. Even so, sites like Wikipedia can be useful for the research process, especially in the early stages. Many Wikipedia articles contain interesting and helpful information, and they often link to the broader sources of this information at the bottom of the page. This list of sources can be a goldmine for actual credible research.

Bottom line: it is fine to start with Wikipedia as you explore a new topic, but you should never cite a Wikipedia article itself within your paper; instead, follow the trail of credible sources at the end of an article to find quality information. This trick can be helpful when seeking out scholarly articles as well: often, finding one high-quality article about a subject can lead to a wealth of other high-quality sources if you check the Works Cited or Bibliography page at the end of your article.

When they are first asked to reflect on the kind of research they prefer, many Comp 1 students indicate that they prefer general online research—the kind you might engage in to learn something new or answer a quick question for yourself outside of class—to more specific research that relies on formal scholarship. This is usually because students are more familiar with general research, even if their approach to online searching has traditionally been based more on trial and error than deliberate strategy. Often, though, it does not take long for students to realize that conducting research using academic databases is actually easier in many ways—at least when you need to find a variety of high-level sources in a short space of time.

If your assignment allows for the use of popular sources, you can cast a wider net and find more sources with general web searches, but you will likely have to devote more time to weeding out less-than-relevant sources and vetting their credibility. You will also need to put more effort into creating correct citations for your sources if you go this route; academic databases, on the other hand, usually feature citation tools that automatically generate citations that can easily be tailored to adhere to whatever citation style you are required to use. For a helpful in-between option, many students turn to Google Scholar, which offers at least partial access to scholarly sources without the intermediary of an institutional database.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar looks like a regular Google search, but it aspires to include the vast majority of published scholarship. Google doesn’t share a list of which journals they include or how Google Scholar works, though, which limits its utility for scholars. Also, because it’s so wide-ranging, it can be harder to find the most appropriate sources for your topic. However, if you want to cast a wide net while still finding professional-level sources, it can be a very useful tool.

Here are three tips for using Google Scholar effectively:

1. Add your field (economics, psychology, French, etc.) as one of your keywords. If you just put in “crime,” for example, Google Scholar will return all sorts of stuff from sociology, psychology, geography, and history. If your paper is on crime in French literature, your best sources may be buried under thousands of papers from other disciplines. A set of search terms like “crime French literature modern” will get you to relevant sources much faster.
2. Don’t ever pay for an article. When you click on links to articles in Google Scholar, you may end up on a publisher’s site that tells you that you can download the article for $20 or $30. Don’t do it! You probably have access to virtually all the published academic literature through your library resources. Write down the key information (authors’ names, title, journal title, volume, issue number, year, and page numbers) and go find the article through your library website. If you don’t have immediate full-text access, you may be able to get it through an interlibrary loan. If you are using a Butler-owned computer, you should see “BCC Journal Finder” to the right of some entries in Scholar. Those are the articles you can find via the Butler library databases without having to pay extra.
3. Use the “cited by” feature. If you get one great hit on Google Scholar, you can quickly see a list of other papers that cited it.

See the text Choosing Sources: A Guide to Academic Research From Ohio State University for more help with categorizing sources.