Organize Your Searching
Use the following organizational tools to help you throughout the literature search process. When you read articles, it's helpful to think about them in the context of your research question, theory, and hypothesis. These documents allow you to compile details about your sources, such as citation information, purpose, methodologies, implications, and critiques. The documents can also help with identifying similarities and themes between articles and authors.
- Summarizing articles (W)When you read articles, it's helpful to think about them in the context of your research question, theory, and hypothesis. This worksheet is designed to help you start approaching articles in that way.
What is a DOI?
DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. It is a persistent, unique number that identifies a piece of online or digital information, such as a journal article, a chapter in an online book, a data set, a map, and so on. Students most often encounter DOIs when they're citing journal articles. Keep in mind that not every journal article will have a DOI assigned to it! Look for the DOI on the first page of the article, either at the top or bottom. You need to include them in your citation as they are very helpful when trying to locate the article later.
If you don't see the DOI:
Visit CrossRef.ORG
Search for the article to find the article's DOI.
- APA 7th ed. Citation StyleThis includes the frequently used resource types and basic citation formats of those resource types.
Citation Management System
A citation management system can help you organize, manage, and annotate your references when working on projects or assignments. Below are some examples.
Note: There are free versions of the below-mentioned citation management systems.
- ZoteroZotero is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials (such as PDF files). It is produced by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
- MendeleyMendeley is a commercial, reference manager that is used to manage and share research papers and generate bibliographies for scholarly articles. It is produced by Elsevier.
- EndNoteEndNote is a commercial reference management software package, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. It is produced by Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science publishers).
Video Tutorials: Citation Management System
- Zotero: Complete Tutorial12 minutes
- Mendeley: Complete Tutorial17 minutes
- Endnote: Complete Tutorial14 minutes
