Start your search broadly:

Target search - use subject specific databases or sources:

Keywords

• Break down your question - don’t type your question into the search box.
• Try different combinations of keywords to get different results. 
• Use synonyms for keywords. For example, instead of kids, try adolescents. 

Truncation

• If you’re not sure about keywords, use truncation. If you type in “math*”, it will act as if you searched for mathematics, mathematical and math. Each database or search engine uses a different symbol, but they usually use *. You’ll need to know the root of the word - math, chem, phys, psyc, etc. 

Phrases

• Use quotations! When you surrounded a phrase with quotations, such as “Wall street” - it will provide you will articles that have the phrase “wall street” instead of articles with the word wall or the word street. 

Boolean Operators
These operators help to narrow or widen your search results.

• AND - narrows your results, requirement that both search terms are in the results.
• OR - widens your results, requires that either search term is in the result.
• NOT - returns results that have one search term and not the other.

Evaluating Articles

• Relevance - Is the source appropriate for your topic? Who is the audience for the source? Is the source understandable?
• Information Type - What type of source do you have? Does it provide you the appropriate type of information you need? What do the different information types add to your research?
• Depth - Is there enough information in your source to add new knowledge to your research? Does the author provide citations to their research? 

Evaluating Journals

• Use Journal Impact Factors cautiously - depending on the discipline, might not be the most useful
• Review the journal homepage for contact information, scope, publication guidelines, etc. 
• Use the Best Practices information from the Directory of Open Access Journals.
• If you feel nervous about any journal, please feel free to contact myself or another librarian!

No matter the subject, it's important to make sure you cite your sources appropriately.

Most databases provide a starting point citation that you can build off of. You need to make sure that things are out of place or that there is puntuations in places that shouldn't be. 

To review different popular citation styles, make sure to check out Purdue OWL