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Berea Writes!: Chapter 6 Research

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“Chapter 6 Research” in “Berea Writes!”

Chapter 6 - Finding & Using Outside Sources

Educators are fond of assigning research papers because they require you to find your own sources, confront conflicting evidence, and synthesize diverse information and ideas—all skills required in any professional leadership role. Research papers also allow students to pursue their own topic of interest. At the same time, incorporating credible sources into your own writing can be a new step and involve a lot of new language and practices in your writing process (start early). In this section, we will answer the following questions:

  1. What is a “source”?
  2. What are the different types of secondary sources?
  3. What makes a source scholarly or academic?
  4. How can I create a research strategy?
  5. Where can I find credible sources for my paper?

1. What is a “source”?

A source can be anything you are citing or using to understand or make an argument about an issue: a physical artifact, a scientific study, a letter from 1855, a poem, or a TikTok video. What kind of sourcing is acceptable for any given paper in any given class varies by writing purpose, discipline, and sometimes professor, so understanding the rhetorical situation for the kind of research you are doing and what is appropriate is always important. There are many kinds of sourcing you might use to support an argument, but some professors will refer to “primary” and “secondary” sources. Primary sources are actual documents that provide raw information (e.g. a historical letter written by a formerly enslaved Black woman in the 1800s or an original study on bacterial growth from a laboratory research group), while a secondary source is a source, usually written by a scholar, that provides an interpretation of a primary source (e.g. an article analyzing the daily literacy practices of Black Americans in the 19th century) without necessarily creating new raw data. But even these terms will change depending on the class and professor. If you are not sure what constitutes a “good source” in any given class, don’t be afraid to ask your professor or TA.

2. What are the different types of secondary sources?

The table below summarizes types of secondary sources in four tiers. All sources have their legitimate uses, but the top-tier ones are generally the most credible for academic work.

Figure 0.1 "Source Type Table" from Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence, CC-BY-SA-NC, by Amy Guptill

Tier

Type

Content

Uses

How to find them

1

Peer-reviewed academic publications

Rigorous research and analysis

Provide strong evidence for claims and references to other high-quality sources

Academic article databases from your university’s library website; Google Scholar may provide specific sources to look up in full on the library website.

2

Reports, articles, and books from credible non-academic sources

Well-researched and even-handed descriptions of an event or state of the world

Initial research on events or trends not yet analyzed in the academic literature; may reference important Tier 1 sources

Websites of relevant government/nonprofit agencies or academic article databases from your university library’s website

3

Short pieces from newspapers or credible websites

Simple reporting of events, research findings, or policy changes

Often point to useful Tier 2 or Tier 1 sources, may provide a factoid or two not found anywhere else

Strategic Google searches or article databases, including newspapers and magazines

4

Agenda-driven or uncertain pieces

Mostly opinion, varying in thoughtfulness and credibility

May represent a particular position within a debate; more often provide keywords and clues about higher quality sources

Non-specific Google searches

Tier 1: Peer-reviewed academic publications

Peer-reviewed academic publications are sources from mainstream academic literature: books and scholarly articles. Academic books generally fall into three categories: (1) textbooks written with students in mind, (2) academic books that give an extended report on a large research project, and (3) edited volumes, in which each chapter is authored by different people.

Scholarly articles appear in academic journals, which are published multiple times a year in order to share the latest research findings with scholars in the field. They’re usually sponsored by an academic society. To get published, these articles and books had to earn favorable anonymous evaluations by qualified scholars. Who are the experts writing, reviewing, and editing these scholarly publications? Your professors. We describe this process below. Learning how to read and use these sources is a fundamental part of being a college student.

Tier 2: Reports, articles and books from credible non-academic sources

Some events and trends are too recent to appear in Tier 1 sources. Also, Tier 1 sources tend to be highly specific, and sometimes you need a more general perspective on a topic. Thus, Tier 2 sources can provide quality information that is more accessible to non-academics. There are three main categories.

First, official reports from government agencies or major international institutions like the World Bank or the United Nations generally have research departments staffed with qualified experts who seek to provide rigorous, even-handed information to decision-makers.

Second, feature articles from major newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London Times, or The Economist are based on original reporting by experienced journalists (not press releases) and are typically 1500+ words in length.

Third, there are some great books from non-academic presses that cite their sources; they’re often written by journalists. All three of these source types are generally well-researched descriptions of an event or state of the world produced by credentialed experts who generally seek to be even-handed. It is still up to you to judge their credibility. Your instructors, librarians, or writing center consultants can advise you on which sources in this category have the most credibility.

Tier 3. Short pieces from periodicals or credible websites

A step below the well-developed reports and feature articles that make up Tier 2 are the short tidbits that you might find in newspapers and magazines or credible websites. Usually, a short piece is just a couple paragraphs or less and often reports on just one thing: an event, interesting research finding, or policy change. They don’t take extensive research and analysis to write, and many just summarize a press release written and distributed by an organization or business. They may describe things like corporate mergers, newly discovered diet-health links, or important school-funding legislation.

You may want to cite Tier 3 sources in your paper if they provide an important factoid or two that isn’t provided by a higher-tier piece, but if the Tier 3 article describes a particular study or academic expert, your best bet is to find the journal article or book it is reporting on and use that Tier 1 source instead. Sometimes you can find the original journal article by putting the author’s name into a library database.

What counts as a credible website in this tier? You may need some guidance from instructors or librarians, but you can learn a lot by examining the person or organization providing the information (look for an “About” link). For example, if the organization is clearly agenda-driven or not up-front about its aims and/or funding sources, then it definitely isn’t something you want to cite as a neutral authority. Also, look for signs of expertise. A tidbit about a medical research finding written by someone with a science background carries more weight than the same topic written by a policy analyst. These sources are sometimes unclear about such details, which is all the more reason to follow the trail to a Tier 1 or Tier 2 source whenever possible. The better the source, the more supported your paper will be and the more credible you will seem as a researcher.

Tier 4. Agenda-driven or pieces from unknown sources

This tier is essentially everything else. These types of sources—especially Wikipedia—can be helpful in identifying interesting topics, positions within a debate, keywords to search, and, sometimes, higher-tier sources on the topic. They often play a critically important role in the early part of the research process when you are trying to learn general information and learn enough to research more specific sub-topics, but they generally aren’t (and shouldn’t be) cited in the final paper.

Another strategy you can try to assess whether your new Tier 4 source is worth using is lateral reading, where you open multiple tabs online and evaluate the source’s credibility while you read the source. Additional tabs might let you investigate the author, the source’s reputation, and possible bias in the source. The librarians at Hutchins Library love to help with lateral reading and are glad to meet with you.

Tip: Don’t forget to cite!

It doesn’t matter how well supported or amazing your paper is if you don’t cite your sources! A citing mistake could definitely get you a zero on the paper you worked so hard on, and maybe even kicked out of school. For more information about citations, see Chapter 7.

Exercise 1

Based on what you already know or what you can find from Tier 4 sources like Wikipedia, start a list of the people, organizations, sources, and keywords that seem most relevant to your topic. Write them down! You may need this background information when you start searching for more scholarly sources later on.

Tip: Mix it up.

Try to locate a mixture of different source types for your assignments. Some of your sources can be more popular, like Tier 3 websites or encyclopedia articles, but you should also try to find at least a few Tier 1 or Tier 2 articles from journals or reputable magazines/newspapers.

Key Takeaways

  • There are several different categories of academic and popular sources. Scholarly sources are usually required in academic papers.
  • It’s important to understand your professor’s requirements and look for sources that fill those requirements. Also, try to find a variety of different source types to help you fully understand your topic.

3. What makes a source scholarly or academic?

Most of the Tier 1 sources available are academic articles, also called scholarly articles, scholarly papers, journal articles, academic papers, or peer-reviewed articles. They all mean the same thing: a paper published in an academic journal after being scrutinized anonymously and judged to be sound by other experts in the subfield. Academic articles are essentially reports that scholars write to their peers—present and future—about what they’ve done in their research, what they’ve found, and why they think it’s important. Scholarly journals and books from academic presses use a peer-review process to decide which articles merit publication. The whole process, outlined below, can easily take a year or more!

Figure 0.2 "Understanding the Academic Peer Review Process", CC-0, by Virginia Western Community College

Academic Peer Review Steps

  1. Author submits manuscript to journal editor.
  2. Editor reviews manuscript and either accepts or rejects the manuscript for peer review. If rejected, the author may try to send the article to a different journal.
  3. If accepted, the editor recruits 2-3 expert readers (i.e., the author's peers) to read the text.
  4. Peers review the manuscript and make suggestions for improvements. Peer reviewers suggest either accepting or rejecting the manuscript for publication.
  5. Editor reviews peer feedback and decides to a. reject the manuscript, b. ask the author to make revisions (called a “revise and resubmit”), or c. accept the manuscript without any changes.
  6. If offered a “revise and resubmit,” the author makes revisions based on reviewer’s comments and then resubmits the manuscript to the journal editor.
  7. Editor reviews the revised manuscript and decides to a. reject the revised manuscript, b. ask the author to make additional revisions, or c. accept the revised manuscript. Sometimes the editor may decide to send the revision out to reviewers again.
  8. If accepted, the manuscript is prepared for publication.
  9. The author has one final chance to make changes to the manuscript during the copyediting process.
  10. The manuscript is published.

When you are trying to determine if a source is scholarly, look for the following characteristics:

  • Structure: The full text article often begins with an abstract or summary containing the main points of the article.  It may also be broken down into sections like "Methods," "Results," and "Discussion;” this layout is called IMRaD and is frequently used in STEM and social science disciplines.
  • Authors: Authors’ names are clearly listed with credentials/degrees and places of employment, which are often universities or research institutions. The authors are experts in the field.
  • Audience: The article uses advanced vocabulary or specialized language intended for other scholars in the field, not for the average reader.
  • Length: Scholarly articles are often, but not always, longer than the popular articles found in general interest magazines like Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, etc. Articles are longer because it takes more content to explore topics in depth.
  • Bibliography or Reference List: Scholarly articles include footnotes, endnotes or parenthetical in-text notes referring to items in a bibliography or reference list. Bibliographies are important to find the original source of an idea or quotation.

Figure 0.3 "Example Scholarly Source", derivative image, by Virginia Western Community College

Screenshot of academic article with arrows identifying different elements of the text, like “abstract” and “endnotes.”

Students sometimes grumble when they’re ordered to use scholarly articles in their research. It seems a lot easier to just Google some terms and find stuff that way. However, academic articles are the most efficient resource out there. They are evaluated by experts and structured specifically to help readers zero in on the most important passages. Moreover, an academic article helps you quickly see what experts are talking about, right now, in this discipline, and it’s generally more exciting to be part of a real and current conversation than rehashing something the field covered in the 1980s.

Writing at Work: Credible Sourcing

Finding high-quality, credible research doesn’t stop after college. Citing excellent sources in professional presentations and publications could impress a future supervisor and strengthen your arguments for pay raises or office remodels in the workplace.

Key Takeaways

  • Academic sources follow a rigorous process called peer-review. A lot of time and effort goes into ensuring that scholarly journal articles are high-quality and credible.
  • Skim a source and look for elements like a defined structure, author credentials, advanced language, and a bibliography. If these elements are included, the source is likely academic or scholarly.

4. How can I create a research strategy?

Now that you know what to look for, how should you go about finding academic sources? Our biggest tip for conducting research is to have a plan before you start searching. Developing a research question and a list of keywords and search terms will help you find focused and helpful sources.

Research Questions

Many students want to start searching using a broad topic or even their specific thesis statement. If you start with too broad of a topic, your search results list will overwhelm you. Imagine having to sort through thousands of sources to try to find ones to use in your paper. That’s what happens when your topic is too broad; your information will also be too broad. Starting with your thesis statement usually means you have already formed an opinion about the topic. What happens if the research doesn’t agree with your thesis?  Instead of closing yourself off to one side of the story, it’s better to develop a research question that you would like the research to help you answer about your topic.

Steps for Developing a Research Question

The steps for developing a research question, listed below, help you organize your thoughts.

Step 1: Pick a topic (or consider the one assigned to you).

Step 2: Write a narrower/smaller topic that is related to the first.

Step 3: List some potential questions that could logically be asked in relation to the narrow topic.

Step 4: Pick the question that you are most interested in.

Step 5: Modify that question as needed so that it is more focused.

Here’s an example:

Figure 0.4 "Developing a Research Question", CC-0, by Virginia Western Community College

Upside down triangle diagram showing how to narrow from the general topic of “cars” to the narrower topic “self-driving cars” to the research question “are self-driving cars safer than those driven by people?”

Keywords & Search Terms

Starting with a research question helps you figure out precisely what you’re looking for. Next, you’ll need the most effective set of search terms – starting from main concepts and then identifying related terms. These keywords will become your search terms, and you’ll use them in library databases to find sources.

Identify the keywords in your research question by selecting nouns important to the meaning of your question and leaving out words that don’t help the search, such as adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and, usually, verbs. Nouns that you would use to tag your research question so you could find it later are likely to be its main concepts.

Example: How are birds affected by wind turbines?

The keywords are birds and wind turbines. Avoid terms like “affect” and “effect” as search terms, even when you’re looking for studies that report effects or effectiveness. These terms are common and contain many synonyms, so including them as search terms can limit your results.

Example Question: What lesson plans are available for teaching fractions?

The keywords are lesson plans and fractions. Stick to what’s necessary. For instance, don’t include: children—nothing in the research question suggests the lesson plans are for children; teaching—teaching isn’t necessary because lesson plans imply teaching; available—available is not necessary.

For each keyword, list alternative terms, including synonyms, singular and plural forms of the words, and words that have other associations with the main concept. Sometimes synonyms, plurals, and singulars aren’t enough. Also consider associations with other words and concepts. For instance, it might help, when looking for information on the common cold, to include the term “virus”—because a type of virus causes the common cold.

One important note: using keywords for searching is an iterative process, meaning that you will not be entering these keywords just once, or even in one single form. You’ll be entering these words across multiple websites and databases, and you’ll be picking up additional words from your findings as you go along. Try not to get frustrated when your initial search doesn’t yield perfect results; this is how real research works. If you are getting frustrated, consider making an appointment with a research librarian.

Once you have keywords and alternate terms, you are prepared to start searching for sources in library search engines called databases.

Writing at Work

Keywords can improve your searching in all different kinds of databases and search engines. Try using keywords instead of entire sentences when you search Google and see how your search results improve.

Exercise 2

Using the Word Cloud example shown above, create a Word Cloud for your research question. Think of at least 5 keywords and alternate terms you might use for searching.

Key Takeaways

  • It’s a good idea to begin the research process with a question you’d like to answer, instead of a broad topic or a thesis statement.
  • Creating a research strategy and finding keywords and alternate terms for your topic can help you locate sources more effectively. The best way to refine your keywords is to take your “best guess” at a keyword for your topic, find one source that matches well with what you want to find, and write down all the keywords related to that source. Repeat that process and find more until you have a good collection of sources.
  • Creating a Word Cloud to organize your thoughts makes searching for sources faster and easier.

5. Where can I find credible sources for my paper?

Finding sources is a task that beginning researchers are often overwhelmed by. Real research is rarely a simple, linear task where you enter a single keyword into a search bar and easily find a set of 5 relevant sources that will give you what you need. Rather, plan for multiple searches, both physical and digital, where you record new information, write down clues, read, hit some dead ends, and then seek out new leads. If you plan ahead and give yourself time for this, the process of research can be like solving a mystery and can be enjoyable if you have a genuine curiosity about your topic. If you’re new to the process, you may want to talk to a research librarian and have someone model for you the kind of searching that is normal for academic research. Regardless of whether you are exploring your life’s passion or just trying to get that L&I 2 paper completed, plan to track ALL your research (keywords, questions, source titles, journal names, dates) in a notebook or document. Trust us: it will save time later.

Because the kinds of issues you might research vary by discipline, subject matter, and academic norms, start by understanding the rhetorical situation of what you are researching and make some internal judgment calls about the kinds of sources you need to study that topic well. Consider these examples:

Example 1 - If you are researching online communities in 2025, it would not be reasonable to find a lot of peer-reviewed articles on that topic from library databases; however, you could combine your collection of TikTok video challenges with older peer-reviewed research on social media more generally to understand what older scholarship can apply to the most recent phenomenon.

Example 2 - If you are researching African American Language in the college classroom, you can find a rich archive of educational scholarship going back to the 1970s, but you might have to add in older keywords like “AAVE” and “ebonics” to find those sources. If you are also interested in how to promote the use of home languages (another keyword) in the college classroom, you might also need to add keywords like “linguistic justice” to find some quality sources on that separate-but-connected subtopic.

If your class has assigned you scholarly readings on the topic of your research already, you are in a good position to begin searching by using citation mining; using one high-quality scholarly book or article on a subject, you look at its citations and make yourself a list of other references to read. Looking at the References section or bibliography for a book or article will often let you read backward, understanding what was published prior to your one good source. If you want to find out what has been published since that time, you can use Google Scholar. Enter the title of an established scholarly work that has the focus you want to research, then check the “Cited by” button to see publications that have cited that work since its publication. Write these entries down – you may be able to find their titles on Google Scholar, but you may have to visit library databases (or the physical library) to actually find the books and articles that will be mentioned.

Your college or university library pays big money to subscribe to databases (like search engines for the academy) each year to help you access credible, academic sources with available pdfs that would be otherwise unavailable. Some are general purpose databases that include the most prominent journals in many disciplines, and some are specific to a particular discipline. Berea College’s Hutchins Library website contains a full list of databases , but sometimes the online database list is overwhelming for students. Remember that you can always make a research appointment with a librarian if you need help knowing what databases to use for your topic.

Never used a database before? Try out Academic Search Complete or JSTOR, two commonly used general purpose databases with articles from reputable journals in many fields of study. You will get plenty of results for most L&I 1 and 2 class research projects. ERIC, another generalized database, contains more education-focused research. Finally, PubMed is a good starter database for research in medicine. But these are just single examples: there are multiple databases that are useful in each field. As you get more focused in your major classes, you’ll start to get a sense of which databases are most helpful for your field of study – and don’t be afraid to ask your professors!

Notes about citation generators: in many databases, you’ll see a citation generator. It’s ok to download citations and add them to your research document, but you’ll want to manually check them against Purdue OWL or a style guide before adding them to a reference or works cited page in a paper to make sure they are using the citation style for that course. If you begin to engage in longer research projects that require more sources (25+) or begin to reuse sources as part of an ongoing research focus that you may want to use later for graduate school, you might start using citation management software like Zotero or Mendeley. These larger programs have a learning curve but can keep lists, pdfs, and notes for sources in one convenient spot and can also, once you’ve entered each source’s information, automatically plug in data for in-text citations and reference pages.

Exercise 3

Visit Hutchins Library’s list of databases, open up Academic Search complete, and try typing some of your keywords/search terms into the search box. After you enter your keyword, you can space over and type OR, and the system will suggest alternate keywords for your search. Write these down if they seem relevant. You can also review the keywords listed for sources that feel like a match for your topic.

If you don’t see the type or amount of results you want, try some of your other alternate terms. The main point is to keep trying! Sometimes you need to change your search terms or try searching in a different database to find new or different results. It’s normal to hit snags in the research process, and persistence and creativity are part of that process.

Tip: Meet with a Reference Librarian!

If you can’t find the sources you need, visit the Hutchins Library Reference Desk or set up an appointment for one-on-one help from a librarian.

Key Takeaways

  • Academic libraries subscribe to special search engines for scholarly sources called databases.
  • Librarians can help you find and use the best databases for your subject or topic.

CC licensed content, shared previously

Writing In College: From Competence to Excellence. Authored by: Amy Guptill. Institution: SUNY Brockport. License: CC BY-NC-SA

Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research. Edited by: Cheryl Lowry. Institution: Ohio State University. License: CC BY

Image Credits:

Figure 0.1 "Source Type Table" from Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence, CC-BY-SA-NC, by Amy Guptill.

Figure 0.2 "Understanding the Academic Peer Review Process", CC-0, by Virginia Western Community College

Figure 0.3 "Example Scholarly Source", derivative image, by Virginia Western Community College. Based on “Transnational Debts: The Cultural Memory of Navajo Code Talkers in World War II” in American Studies Journal, CC-BY-SA, by Birgit Dawes.

Figure 0.4 "Developing a Research Question", CC-0, by Virginia Western Community College

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