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WRPR 131: In the Wake of War (HC): Journal Articles

Writing Program 131: In the Wake of War: Literary Representations of Violence and its Aftermath (Tensuan) Spring 2012

Using Journal Articles

Journal articles provide in-depth scholarly information for your research.  They are vetted and improved by peer review prior to publication.  They form an important part of the communication network that makes research available, prompts discussion, and identifies new issues to resolve.

When searching in journal databases, these strategies will get better results:

*  Truncation:  Shorten search words with an asterisk to get all the forms 
          war*  will get war/s, warrior/s, warlike

OR:  Link synonyms with OR and group them with parentheses
          (lying or crafty or sly)

AND: Combine topics that you want to see together
           odysseus and dog and return

" " Phrase: Use quotation marks to search for words together in that order
          "vietnam war"

Focus: Choose where the database is searching.  It may be set automatically for keyword.  You can make the search more precise by looking instead for title words only or for subjects.

Results: Look at the articles retrieved and change search terms for additional results

Finding Journal Articles

The following indexes are good places to look for journal articles about the Odyssey:

Searches millions of journal, magazine, and newspaper articles as well as book reviews.  Many of these are available full text through the tri-colleges.  The rest can be obtained through Article Delivery.

  • Use the filters on the right-hand side of the results list to get quickly to the most useful articles.
  • Choose Peer Reviewed for articles addressing an academic audience
  • Limit the Year of Publication, if you want to see more recent work
  • The publications that appear under Journal Title are often focused in your area of research
  • Undo filters by clicking on the gold box under Remove Filters at the top of the column

  • Use the   button to get the full texts of journal articles.  A separate window will open up and either take you directly to an electronic version of the article, give you a link to check Tripod for a print copy, or provide a form so that you can request electronic delivery from another library.  Just enter your name and barcode and submit the request.