PAL Research Guide

Writing can generally be classified into two categories, popular or scholarly. Some indications that something is scholarly: authors are clearly indicated, citations and/or a bibliography are included, is published by academic presses or scholarly/professional organizations, and conclusions are based on the evidence provided.

While you will usually need scholarly materials for most of your research, sometimes popular sources can offer good background information. For certain topics popular sources are more abundant than scholarly ones. For example, while there are peer-reviewed journals about popular music, if you need information about a recent concert or band, a popular source like Billboard or Rolling Stone may be what you need.

Scholarly resources may also be peer-reviewed, meaning other scholars have looked at it and vetted it as good research before it's published. Popular writing may be edited by someone for style and clarity, but is usually not reviewed rigorously for content.

Think you know the answers?

What is a scholarly source?

Scholarly sources (also referred to as academic, peer-reviewed, or refereed sources) are written by experts in a particular field and serve to keep others interested in that field up to date on the most recent research, findings, and news. These resources will provide the most substantial information for your research and papers.

• When a source has been peer-reviewed, it has undergone the review and scrutiny of a review board of colleagues in the author’s field. They evaluate this source as part of the body of research for a particular discipline and make recommendations regarding its publication in a journal, revisions prior to publication, or, in some cases, reject its publication.
• Scholarly sources’ authority and credibility improve the quality of your own paper or research project.
• The following characteristics can help you differentiate scholarly sources from those that are not. Be sure to look at the criteria in each category when making your determination, rather than basing your decision on only one piece of information.

To Consider: 

• Are author names provided?
• Are the authors’ credentials provided?
• Are the credentials relevant to the information provided?
• Who is the publisher of the information?
• Is the publisher an academic institution, scholarly, or professional organization?
• Is their purpose for publishing this information evident?
• Who is the intended audience of this source?
• Is the language geared toward those with knowledge of a specific discipline rather than the general public?
• Why is the information being provided?
• Are sources cited?
• Are there charts, graphs, tables, and bibliographies included?
• Are research claims documented?
• Are conclusions based on evidence provided?
• How long is the source?
• Is the date of publication evident?

Additional Tips for Specific Scholarly Source Types

Each resource type below will also have unique criteria that can be applied to it to determine if it is scholarly.

Books

• Publishers
  • Books published by a University Press are likely to be scholarly.
  • Professional organizations and the U.S. Government Printing Office can also be indicators that a book is scholarly.
• Book Reviews
  • Book reviews can provide clues as to if a source is scholarly and highlight the intended audience. Many journals will publish book reviews of recently published books.

Articles

• Are the author’s professional affiliations provided?
• Who is the publisher?
• How frequently is the periodical published?
• How many and what kinds of advertisements are present? For example, is the advertising clearly geared towards readers in a specific discipline or occupation?

Web Pages

• What is the domain of the page (for example: .gov, .edu, etc.)?
• Who is publishing or sponsoring the page?
• Is contact information for the author/publisher provided?
• How recently was the page updated?
• Is the information biased? Scholarly materials published online should not have any evidence of bias.

Primary Sources are immediate, first-hand accounts of a topic, from people who had a direct connection with it.

Primary sources can include:

• Texts of laws and other original documents.
• Newspaper reports, by reporters who witnessed an event or who quote people who did.
• Speeches, diaries, letters and interviews - what the people involved said or wrote.
• Original research.
• Datasets, survey data, such as census or economic statistics.
• Photographs, video, or audio that capture an event.

Secondary Sources are one step removed from primary sources, though they often quote or otherwise use primary sources. They can cover the same topic, but add a layer of interpretation and analysis.

Secondary sources can include:

• Most books about a topic.
• Analysis or interpretation of data.
• Scholarly or other articles about a topic, especially by people not directly involved.
• Documentaries (though they often include photos or video portions that can be considered primary sources).

Adapted from UMass Boston Healy Library Primary Sources: A Research Guide

Documenting the Search Process

Whether you are searching in-person or online, in-depth research can greatly benefit from documentation. Documenting your search processes allows you to:

• justify and record your actions and thoughts at various points during your research process
• see how your search strategies change over time and how this affects your search results

What to include in your documentation:

• the names of the sources you searched (database, catalog, physical library location)
• date you searched
• any search limits you used (e.g. by author, by date, by content type, subject heading)
• any search techniques you used (e.g. boolean modifiers or operators)
• number of results
• notes/comments

What Is Citation Chasing?

Citation chasing refers to the process of retracing the research of an author. This is a way of finding targeted, relevant research. It can be done by accessing an article or work's Works Cited, References, or Bibliography.

Cited reference searching (or "forward" citation chasing) refers to the method of finding articles that have cited a previously published work. Cited reference searching can be done in databases that index citation such as Scopus.

This method of tracking citations is simply another way of searching databases to find relevant sources and articles. Citation chasing and cited reference searching, however, has many purposes.

• Citation chasing can help you become more familiar with themes in your research area that span different time periods, researchers, and disciplines.
• The method of using cited references and bibliographies to guide your search process prompts you to read and engage with research that is already in conversation with researchers in the discipline. Therefore, citation chasing can answer some of the following questions:
  • What authors and researchers are being impacted by this article/research?
  • How does this article/research fit within the larger context of the research area I am pursuing?

Methods

• Citation indexing databases like Scopus, and Google Scholar allow users to see research that has cited a given article (forward citation chasing),
• Using the Works Cited or References section of an important article or book to find other sources related to your research topic. Most databases keep a list of sources the displayed article cites.

Who Does My Source Cite?

To find out which works the author has cited and engaged with, consult the bibliography, works cited, footnotes, or endnotes of the paper, chapter, or book.

Searching by Subject or Keyword

When you search by keyword in a database:

• you are searching for words and phrases that can be found anywhere in the text of the item record and/or article.
• you are not searching for commonly used words parts of speech. Examples include articles, pronouns, and prepositions. Databases do not index commonly used words, which are called stop words. Examples of stop words in databases are: a, an, about, after, all, also, and, any, are, as, at, based, because, been, between, and many more.

Searching by keyword can be a flexible way to find a large number of results. You can use keyword searching as a way to find targeted results: slang, jargon, and new terms work well in keyword searches.

When you search by subject, you are using a term from a pre-defined controlled vocabulary determined by that database. Many databases feature a subject-specific thesaurus of subject terms that relate back to the contents in that database. You will only receive articles that were assigned the subject heading you searched with. For this reason, articles found via subject heading searches can be very reliable. The subject will appear in the record item's subject heading or descriptor field.

Searching by subject can be a very specific way to find targeted results within a specific discipline or research area. This can be very beneficial to your research; however, searching by subject only works if you know which subject terms to search with.

What is Boolean Searching?

Boolean searching refers to a search technique that uses tools called operators and modifiers to limit, widen, and refine your search results.

Boolean Searching

Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT

When used, boolean operators can limit and refine or widen and expand your search. Operators tie your search terms together in different ways.

• AND links search terms together.
• OR searches for one term or another.
• NOT excludes the search term directly following it.

Boolean Modifiers

Boolean Modifiers can further expand, refine, and improve a search. Boolean modifiers include the asterisk, *, (also known as truncation/wildcard searching), (parentheses), "quotation marks". 

• The asterisk, *, attaches to the stem of a word and searches for any word includes that stem, or the letters before the asterisk. Therefore, you will get results with different endings but all the same stem. See the following example:
  • Searching for stat* will return results with the following words:
    • state, states, statute, statutory, statistic, statistics, stats, statistical, and more!
• Parentheses, (), are used to encapsulate OR statements. If you want results that return one word out of a group of two or more, you put them between parentheses to ensure that only one of the search terms is returned: (elderly OR aged OR senior citizen).
• Quotation marks, "", return exactly what you typed inside the quotation marks. Therefore if you search for "state" you will only get results containing the word "state" (even the plural of 'state will not be included in your search results!).

Google Scholar is a free search engine that indexes scholarly literature from a wide variety of sources, formats, and disciplines. This index includes peer-reviewed academic materials, conference papers and proceedings, dissertations and theses, as well as court opinions and patents. This indexing also creates a series of links that can directly connect you to each work that was cited and can also connect you to works that have cited the article or theses you are looking at. This is known as citation chasing and is something that Google Scholar is exceptionally good at.

Google Scholar vs. Academic Databases

What's the difference between Google Scholar and an academic database like Ebsco or ProQuest?

Academic databases are searchable collections of published sources that let you know exactly what books, journals, conferences, etc...they are pulling their content from. In many databases, you can easily find a list of publications they are pulling citations from. That means you can tell if you'll be able to find articles from Nature in the database or not. Additionally, academic databases frequently have a subject specific focus and have many options for limiting search results.

Google scholar is also a searchable collection of published sources, but because Google keeps their proprietary information private, they do not share where they are pulling their content from. We don't know exactly where the citations are coming from, what will be included, or what might be missing. Additionally, Google Scholar covers all disciplines and only has a few advanced search options.

Should I Use Google Scholar For My Research?

Google Scholar is good for...

• Helping a beginning researcher identify journal titles and authors connected with subjects of interest.
• Finding "gray literature" like conference proceedings. It includes many articles that wouldn't get included in other indexing services.
• Locating obscure references that are proving difficult to find in conventional databases.
• Locating more information on partial citations.

Google Scholar cannot...

• Sort/search by disciplinary field
• Browse by title
• Limit search results
• Search the deep web

Keep in Mind:

• You may get a long list of results, but you will only have access to the text of articles that the Roosevelt University Library has paid subscriptions for, or that are freely available.
• Not everything in Google Scholar is scholarly. Google Scholar searches academic websites (.edu) as well as journals and publisher websites. Search results can include PowerPoints, news announcements or unpublished materials as well as articles and books. 
• Searching in Google Scholar is imprecise when compared with discipline-specific databases.
• You can perform advanced searches in Google scholar, similar to the library's advanced search features!

General Concepts

• A work created today is protected under copyright as soon as it’s created and is protected for the lifetime of the creator, plus 70 years.
• If more than one person created a work, they might be joint owners of a work.
• When copyright expires, the work becomes public domain.
• Ideas can’t be copyrighted, only the tangible expression in a fixed medium of the idea can.
• You may use any copyrighted material under the “fair use” doctrine, within fair use guidelines. (See "Fair Use")
• If something looks copyrighted, assume it is.

How Long Does Copyright Last?

How Long Does Copyright Protection Last?

What is Public Domain?

When an idea is expressed in a fixed medium, whether it be a painting, a story, a dance choreography, or a poem on the back of a napkin (though certainly not limited to those categories), it has legal copyright protections for a set period of time, allowing the creator to use or exploit the fruit of their work as they see fit, or not at all. In the past, this copyright required some formality in the way of registration or notice, but that is no longer the case for new works.

For more copyright information, read this complete Copyright LibGuide from Cornell University.

•  Copyright Term and the Public Domain 

  Chart created by Cornell University - Updated August 2023

The Complexities Music Copyright

With printed music and recorded music, there are separate copyright issues concerning the work itself and the item (score, CD, digital file, etc.). The work itself is one thing and will have its own creator and dates and rights, while the item (score edition, CD, etc.) will also have rights associated with it. For example, a Mozart symphony may be in the public domain, but the score edition published last year is not.

The simplest way to avoid music copyright infringement is by using music in the public domain, although the caveat remains: read the fine print on how to use material on any site. To record or use music in conjunction video does require additional licensing so keep that in mind. 

For a larger version of this image, check out the source of the infographic.

When using research to write papers, it is essential to cite your sources. 

Plagiarism” means using the work of someone else, in whole or in part, without properly citing that source. This includes all types of works, including music, computer code, works of art, unauthorized generative artificial intelligence (see below), and writing. It is also possible to plagiarize by obtaining a paper from a colleague or purchasing a paper online or elsewhere, by submitting another student’s paper as one’s own, or by Repurposing. Plagiarism is an instance of Academic Dishonesty regardless of whether the conduct was inadvertent or done with the intention to defraud. 

- From RU Policy No. 0.1

Roosevelt University's guide for students on academic dishonesty.

Plagiarism is using someone else’s ideas or words without giving them proper credit. Plagiarism can range from unintentional (forgetting to include a source in a bibliography) to intentional (buying a paper online, using another writer’s ideas as your own to make your work sound smarter). (Purdue Owl) 

Roosevelt University's Learning Commons provides a number of resources to help you with your writing including both tutoring and workshops.  

Beyond Roosevelt, Purdue University's Online Writing Lab is an excellent source for you to consult during the writing process.

There are two main writing styles for music and theatre writing, each are used in different contexts. 

Chicago - Chicago Style Libguide
Colloquially called the Chicago style guide or CMOS, the Chicago Manual of Style has been published by the University of Chicago Press since 1906, including the Chicago Manual of Style Online since 2006.

What Is It?

CMOS is a set of standards for writing in commercial and academic publishing and one of the most widely used style guides. It includes recommendations for grammar, spelling, punctuation and usage; plus manuscript formatting and two variations of source citation.

When Should I Use It?

Chicago is the preferred style of print publishers in both fiction and nonfiction, and many academic journals in the humanities. Instructors in college or high school courses might teach Chicago-style citation but don’t usually enforce other preferences of the manual unless you’re writing for publication, like in grad school.

PAL provides a guide for writing citations in the Chicago Style. You can find this guide here, at https://libguides.roosevelt.edu/PALResearchGuide/Chicago.

MLA - MLA Style Libguide

MLA style began in 1951 when the Modern Language Association of America published the “MLA Style Sheet.” It’s been publishing the updated “MLA Handbook” for students since 1977 and the bulk of its contents online through the MLA Style Center since 2009.

MLA used to publish a separate “MLA Style Manual” for grad students and professional scholars, but that went out of print in 2016. Now “MLA Handbook” is meant for writers at all levels.

What Is It?

MLA style is primarily a set of guidelines for citation and formatting in academic papers. It’s best known for its source citation template. It includes limited guidance on writing mechanics and no recommendations for usage.

When Should I Use It?

Scholarly writers and journals in segments of the humanities focused on language and writing, like language studies and literary criticism, follow MLA style. English students in college and high school might use MLA style for citation and paper formatting instead of APA style.

PAL provides a guide for writing citations in the MLA Style. You can find this guide here, at https://libguides.roosevelt.edu/PALResearchGuide/MLA.