College Success: Find & Cite Articles

This 4:19 video describes what library databases are, why you might want to use one, and how to choose the right ones for your project. It also shows you how to use the PCC Library Articles and Databases page to find databases to use for your project. 

When you have a research assignment, be sure to figure out what types of article sources are required or allowed. Some professors require you to use only scholarly peer-reviewed journals while others might let you use a variety of journals.

Scholarly article: Also known as peer-reviewed, academic, or refereed, these articles are written for researchers and experts and usually share the results of a research study. Scholarly articles are written by experts in the field and are reviewed by expert peers. In many databases, you can limit your search to scholarly, peer-reviewed, or refereed journals to weed out any non-scholarly content. Scholarly article example

Professional/trade article: Written for people working in a specific field. Articles can be written by experts in the field or by staff writers. The articles are only reviewed by journal editors, so they go through a less rigorous review process. Trade article example

Popular journals: Written for a general audience rather than for professionals or scholars, and written by journalists. Examples include The New Yorker, People, and Rolling Stone. Popular article example

This quick quiz from the Ithaca College Library will test your knowledge and help you learn to tell the difference between different types of journals.

Find articles in this search of Academic Search Premier and MasterFILE Premier

Why cite your sources?

When you use someone else's words, ideas, or images in your writing, you need to give them proper credit. Providing a citation or reference enables others to locate these sources, too!  View a sample APA paper to see how citations and formatting are done.

Resources for creating APA-style citations

• APA 7 Formatting and Style guide

• APA 7 citation examples (pdf)

• Anatomy of an APA Journal Article Citation, 7th edition (5:58 video from Dalhousie University)
• Citing AI in APA format (NOTE: Make sure you've fact-checked any assertions the AI text is making and verified any sources that it references. AI tools do not always share accurate information or viable sources.)

Free citation creation tools to help you generate APA-style citations:

• MyBib
  • Generate citations and bibliographies by pasting a URL or searching for a resource by title
  • Covers APA 6 & 7
  • Copy and paste citations, download them as a Word doc, save them to Google Drive, print, or email them to yourself
• NCSU Citation Builder 
  • Simple citation builder for some digital and print materials
  • Covers APA 6 & 7
  • Copy and paste your generated citation into your bibliography
• Calvin College's Knight Cite 
  • Build citations for a wide range of resources in print, digital, multimedia, and communication
  • Covers APA 7
  • Create a free Knight Cite account to save citations and export them to Word or RTF document

Need help with hanging indentation?

• Here is a link to a short video tutorial for hanging indentation formatting in Word.
• Here is a link to a short video tutorial for hanging indentation formatting in Google Drive/Docs