Updated Aug 22, 2019.

Two good starting points

• Google Scholar – https://scholar.google.com (login with your NetID)
• Web of Science – Go to https://lib.pacificu.edu
  • Click “Databases” Icon
  • Click on “W” and find “Web of Science”
  • You will need to login with your NetID

Tips when looking for literature

• Beware of articles in “predatory” or “pay to publish” journals. Articles may appear to be peer-reviewed, but it is a sham peer review process and not stringent. You don’t want to trust the results of these studies.
  • Learn more about it here: https://predatoryjournals.com/about/
  • List of predatory journals. https://predatoryjournals.com/journals
• Find the nicely formatted pdf version of the paper as published by the publishing company. Contrast this to a the NCBI version of the paper or the web version. The formatting of the pdf is as the paper is intended to be read and will have all relevant information. The NCBI and web versions may be missing information.
• Use Web of Science and/or Google Scholar to look forward and backwards for relevant studies.
  • Look at the papers cited in a particular article.
  • Look at papers that cite a particular article.
• Become adept at quickly skimming an articles title, abstract, and contents to determine if it might be relevant.
• Keep an open mind as you read. Something that doesn’t initially seem relevant, may actually be an important study.
• Sometimes the most important information is not actually in the paper you’re reading.
  • They may refer to an important paper (see above “papers cited in an article”)
  • The information you actually want might not be in the main body of the paper. Check the Supplementary Materials and Appendices, for example.