A necessary filter for your sources should be the year that the resources are published. Most frequently found on the left-hand side of database searches, you should filter your results into a timeframe that is most applicable to your assignment. Sciences will likely require most recent research, within the last 10 years (2015-2025), whereas you might want to expand your year timeframe to focus on a specific year range such as 1929-1940 in a History paper.
Most professors will indicate a timeframe if they expect research from a certain period, but it is usually best practice to look within the past 10 years.
Page 3 is a short guide to sources and how to filter them efficiently for your research.
Academic sources are vast and varied in their accessibility and topics. You will happen upon them in your searches through the databases. You will commonly find
-Journal Articles
-Books
-Conference publications
-Dissertations
-Educational Websites
-Research Reports
-Online Archives
You might also find podcasts, magazines, blogs, tweets, etc. to be sources for your research. All of these types of media are either primary or secondary sources and they all require citation in your paper. On the left-hand side you will see the "FORMAT" bar, and that will allow you to filter what types of resources you will get in your search results.
Primary sources are first-hand accounts or evidence of an event. This means a journal that was written during a war that was digitized and archived is a primary source. Rain collection data that was recorded and cataloged in a specific area over a certain time is a primary source. If the resource was created during the timeframe that an event occurred, like a war or in a specific season in a year, by someone who lived that experience, it is a primary source,. Commonly: letters. diaries, original photographs, autobiographies, census records.
Secondary sources are sources that analyze and interpret the primary source that they are based on. A literature review of Anne Frank's diary would be a secondary source. A medical journal that synthesizes the findings of a clinical trial and compares them to another drug under testing would be a secondary source. This means that someone is reading a primary or another secondary source and adding their thoughts. Commonly: newspapers, textbooks, biographies, dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Peer reviewed research, simply explained, means that many other researchers or professionals within a field have read the resource and determined that it is an acceptable piece of literature for the field it was published for. Most academic research papers will want a high percent of peer reviewed articles and journals. This is a filter that is commonly found in databases, most likely a check-box that you can toggle on and off. Best practice is to use peer reviewed literature for research assignments when citing journals and articles that critically examine an idea or a topic.
