Searching Academic Search Complete for Scholarly & Popular Information

Academic Search Complete is a database that helps you to discover newspaper, magazine, and scholarly articles in science related topics (and many others.) 

You can search Academic Search Complete on campus or from off-campus with your COD username and password.

In order to find articles about a specific topic, follow the steps listed below: 

1. Try typing your search terms.  Try to narrow down your topic into two ideas: for example, rather than searching for inflammation, search for inflammation and low fat diet in order to look at a smaller, focused set of articles.  (See image below).

   

2. Next, take a look at the first couple of article titles.   Find an article that looks like a good match for your topic.  What kinds of keywords do you notice in the title or subject headings?  Change your search terms to match what you see suggested.  (See the green circles on the image below).
3. Finally, take a moment to think about the types of articles you'd like to see. Look to the left of the screen to narrow by date, select for full text, and pick a type of article.  Check out the red circle on the image above.  

Need help figuring out how to narrow your topic? 

Try searching in one of the following databases to see what else you can learn: 

Now that you've found some helpful articles for your project, you'll want to find start to evaluate individual articles to see if they are a good fit for your project.  Start by clicking on the title of an article that looks helpful.

You'll find more info now about the source, including the abstract (the large green circle on the image), which will both help you to know the focus of your article as well as the type of writing you can expect.

You can also look at the subject headings in the center of the screen, which are now clickable links.

Finally, if you like the look of the abstract, look to the left side of the screen.  If you see the words Full Text, click on the link and open up the article.  From that link, you can download the article, print out the article, and send yourself a citation.

If you don't see the words Full Text in the upper left corner, reach out to me (or reference) to get help finding the full text of an article.

See a result in our catalog or a database with the right dates? If so, click the link and search for your article by the article title. No results that are helpful? Fill out this form to request the article (for free) from another library.

Trying to find a scholarly article?  Here are some specialized guides to searching databases for scientific information:

• Searching Science Direct for full-text scholarly articles
• Searching Academic Search Complete for popular and scholarly information
• Searching SciFinder for chemistry articles & molecule information. 

Have questions about what research or review articles are, how to read research articles, or how to evaluate them? Take a look at the following guides for more information. 

Need some help citing what you find?  You can check out the following links for some guidance:

And, as always, you're welcome to contact me using the information on the right, or schedule a research appointment with a librarian whenever the library is open by clicking "Ask Us for Help" on the right of the page.