At this point, ask yourself the question “What do I know or not know about this issue?" Start examining sources to come to a greater understanding of the state of knowledge. The individual pieces (arguments) must be put together in order to reveal the whole picture.
Capture your thoughts into a list or concept map to guide your brainstorming and keep a record of your topic as you develop it with new information. As you search capture:
These databases are best for finding scholarly articles about business topics.
Questions about connecting from off-campus? Review the off-campus access page.
For your project in this class, we recommend you start in Scopus and to explore the other databases as your research progresses. Use the resources below to learn more about how to search in Scopus:
Google is another great resource that can be used to find news articles, blogs, background information on a topic, etc. However, many resources you find in Google, like business news articles from the New York Times or scholarly journal articles, will be locked behind a paywall -- making it look as if you need to pay for access to these articles.
Often, these are resources that JMU Libraries already pays for. Check with one of JMU's business librarians to see whether the full-text article is available to you for free.
Still prefer searching in Google? We recommend you try using Google Scholar to find academic research. Try these tips to access Libraries' resources more seamlessly while using Google Scholar.
Use the Research Guide for your faculty member's department to dive deeper into discipline-specific databases.
Has your faculty member suggested you review articles in a specific journal, such as the Journal of Consumer Psychology?
Use this search box to see if JMU subscribes and review the articles in its most recent issue.
Alternatively, you can use skim these lists of scholarly journals in different subjects that are available through JMU Libraries.
Often, simply searching the title of an article in quotation marks in Google Scholar will bring you to the electronic version.
Follow these steps to link Google Scholar to JMU libraries. Then you should be able to click Get JMU Access to open the article.
This video shows how to identify the journal title from a citation.
If JMU doesn't have access to the full-text of the article, we can borrow it from another library -- at no cost to you. Interlibrary Loan is a service for requesting articles and other materials that are not available in JMU Libraries collections. All students, faculty, and staff with a valid JMU e-ID can use Interlibrary Loan services.
Our ILL team can retrieve the articles you need within a few days -- and sometimes within just a few hours!