This page introduces some of the concepts and skills needed to effectively research. It also looks at some of the key materials and places which you're likely to use for researching and gives some 'top tips' for using them effectively. You might want to work through each section in order, or just jump to the topic which is most relevant for you right now.
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Your campus Library provides access to print copies (wherever available) of the essential and recommended reading for your course.
CU Coventry Library is located on the ground floor of the Mile Lane building, just past the café.
CU London Dagenham Library is located on the second floor in the north wing.
CU London Greenwich Library is located on the first floor.
CU Scarborough Library is located on the ground floor towards the back of the building.
Books (along with ebooks, journal articles and newspaper articles) can be found via Locate, our library catalogue.
Locate gives you access to:
Using Locate for books, you can:
Take a look at the Locate tutorial pages to find out more.
Most of our libraries have a self-service machine where you can borrow and return books. Simply place all the books you want to borrow in the area below the screen; when you tap your ID card, the machine will automatically pick up the details of the books in this area and issue them to your account. You can also borrow and return books at the Library help desk.
Borrowing is free, but charges apply for the late return of books that cannot be renewed.
The library operates an automatic renewal system. To avoid incurring fines, please check your University email account regularly for notices from the library. Items will automatically be renewed, as long as:
Look at the book's sub-title as well as the main title.
This may give you clues about what it will cover and and what it won't.
Look at when the book was written or last updated.
This will tell you if the information is up-to-date enough for your needs.
This information is usually in the frontismatter, printed overleaf from the title page (where there are multiple editions of a book, look when the edition you are holding was written).
Look at the contents page (list of chapters).
This will give you a better idea of what information is covered in the book, and if you will need to read one or two sections or skim through the entire book.
This information is usually at the front of the book, a few pages in.
Look at the index.
This will give a list of all the major subjects covered by the book, listed A-Z, with page numbers where the subject is discussed.
This information is usually at the back of the book, beginning a few pages before the end.
Look for terms and ideas you recognise.
Skim and scan through the sections you identified in the previous steps to look for ideas and concepts you've previously learned about. Does the book reinforce, extend or challenge your existing knowledge?
Starting reading by looking for connections to what you already know can help you to place new information in context.
Only read 'word-for-word' when it's needed.
Reading for research is generally quite pragmatic. Deeper engagement through close reading should be kept for where it will be of most benefit to you or the project you are working on.
You can find ebooks (along with books, journal articles and newspaper articles) via Locate, our library catalogue.
Locate gives you access to:
Using Locate for ebooks, you can:
Take a look at the Locate tutorial pages to find out more.
Locate is the best place to look for ebooks provided by the University Library. All the ebooks bought and subscribed to on your behalf, across lots of different online platforms, can be found via Locate.
You can also search for ebooks directly on most of the ebook platforms we have content hosted on. Some examples of these are BibliU (where you are likely to have some course titles available) and Ebook Central (which is currently where the most ebooks we have access to can be found).
The key benefit of searching on an ebook platform (rather than Locate) is that you can search for words in the full text of the ebook, rather than just in title areas. The major downside of searching just one platform is that you won't see the ebooks we have on other ebook platforms (which might be even better).
The specifics of how ebook platforms work varies from platform to platform. The below features are generally available, but may be in different places on different platforms.
Look at the book's sub-title as well as the main title.
This may give you clues about what it will cover and and what it won't.
Look at when the book was written or last updated.
This will tell you if the information is up-to-date enough for your needs.
This information should be visible somewhere on the screen, often in a box to the left or right of the main ebook panel. If not, check the frontismatter, just after the title page at the front of the book.
Look at the contents page (list of chapters).
This will give you a better idea of what information is covered in the book, and if you will need to read one or two sections or skim through the entire book.
This information is usually in a box or drop-down somewhere on the screen; clicking a chapter title should take you to that section. If not, look at the front of the book, a few pages in.
Look at the index.
This will give a list of all the major subjects covered by the book, listed A-Z, with page numbers where the subject is discussed.
This information is usually at the back of the book, beginning a few pages before the end. This section often isn't hyperlinked in ebooks, but you can search for terms or navigate to that page number using the ebook interface.
Look for terms and ideas you recognise.
Skim and scan through the sections you identified in the previous steps (or use the search function) to look for ideas and concepts you've previously learned about. Does the book reinforce, extend or challenge your existing knowledge?
Starting reading by looking for connections to what you already know can help you to place new information in context.
Only read 'word-for-word' when it's needed.
Reading for research is generally quite pragmatic. Deeper engagement through close reading should be kept for where it will be of most benefit to you or the project you are working on.
You can find ebooks (along with books, journal articles and newspaper articles) via Locate, our library catalogue.
Locate gives you access to:
Using Locate to look for journal articles, you can:
Take a look at the Locate tutorial pages to find out more.
Locate is the best place to start looking for journal articles. The University Library purchases access to lots of databases full of journal articles, which can all be searched individually, but Locate allows articles from lots of databases to be shown in one place.
You can also search for journal articles using specialist search sites like Google Scholar. These will search for articles across all databases which the search engine can access.
The key benefits of searching on Google Scholar (rather than Locate) is that you may find articles which would not appear in a Locate search, and that the interface is very similar to a standard Google search, so it feels familiar. The downsides of Google Scholar are that the results sometimes contain low-quality or unsuitable articles, and that some articles in the result list cannot be read without paying for access.
When you are getting started with research we suggest using Locate (so everything is in one place for you), but if you are struggling to find the information you're looking for you might want to try searching databases directly. Databases provide more detailed search options and filters to look through the articles they contain. Databases recommended for each subject are listed on our Subject Guides pages.
The specifics of how journal articles are laid out can vary quite significantly. The elements below commonly appear in journals and on journal platforms.
The headings used within a journal article might be generic or might be thematic. There may also be no headings in shorter articles. The common generic headings found in journal articles are:
Introduction. This section briefly states the current knowledge about the topic of the article and the reasons why the research was carried out.
Literature Review. This section looks at what has previously been written about the topic of the article, drawing out common themes and highlighting gaps in what is currently known. Some secondary research papers may primarily consist of a literature review.
Methods/Methodology. This section describes the kind of research which was carried out. Research design, ethics and philosophy are all very important, but are not always the easiest things to read about, so don't panic if you find this section difficult to understand.
Results/Findings. This section lays out what the research outputs said. It might be numerical or written information (depending on the kind of research carried out) and there might be graphs and tables to visualise the information being presented. This 'raw' information is provided with limited interpretation.
Discussion. This section interprets the results or findings of the research. It may thematically or systematically look at the significance of what the research found out and make suggestions about how this information might be applied to make changes or improvements. Some articles may present results and findings in one section.
Conclusion. This section draws together the key information from the article, in the same way you would when writing a conclusion for your own assignments.
Generic headings can help guide you through the article and focus your reading. Where thematic headings are used, these can target your reading to the topics you are most interested in.
This gives a short description of what the authors aimed to do, how they structured their research, and the key things they found out. Reading the abstract should give you a good idea about whether the article will be useful for your needs.
This tends to appear in the header or footer of each page of a journal article, often alongside the page number. The volume and issue number is the way in which journals are sorted in order if they exist in paper format (which look a lot like magazines). We use this information in the reference for journal articles, but it's not that relevant for online research purposes.
Some journals will include some keywords relating to the article content underneath the abstract or on the first page of the article. More often, journal databases will provide keywords relating to each article (which also appear in Locate) to help find relevant articles when there's more than one word or term to describe what you're looking for. Adjusting your search to use this 'controlled vocabulary' can often help to find more relevant articles.
Many journal articles will include figures and tables. These are generally used to provide visual or tabular representations of the data or results. Tables are more likely to be raw data from the research undertaken. Figures are more likely to present interpretation of the data found. You can use both to aid your understanding of the research.
Read and re-read the title.
Journal articles often have quite long titles, and commonly include a sub-title which may give more information about the type and scope of research found in the article. There might be unfamiliar technical language or terminology in the title, which you may want to look up if the abstract does not help you parse its meaning.
Look at the abstract in detail.
The abstract provides an overview of what the article's authors set out to do, what kind of research they did to find out more information, and the most important things they found out. The abstract is generally concise but reasonably easy-to-follow, and should give you a good idea about whether it will be worthwhile to read more of the article.
Use skim and scan techniques to read the majority of the article.
There are large parts of a journal article that you will not need to read in detail except for very specific circumstances. There is some benefit in reading parts of the introduction and literature review, but generally it is most efficient to focus on the findings and conclusions of the research rather than the journey which the researchers took to reach them.
Look at the keywords provided and vocabulary used.
There are often several terms or names for substantially the same issue or topic. Databases prefer to categorise these diffuse terms under one label to make it easier to find all articles relating to the topic under one heading. Some databases use industry-standard headings (e.g. MeSH, or Medical Subject Headings) but many define their own. Some journals will also provide their own keywords within each article.
Check the reference list.
Even if the article you're currently reading isn't quite right for your needs, it's worth checking the articles and other materials they referred to in their reference list. There may be another article there which is exactly what you are looking for.
Look at what else the authors have written.
The authors of journal articles are usually specialists in their fields, and will often have written other articles looking at the same general (or very specific) subject area. On most journal databases you can click an author's name to see what else they've written; otherwise, you can just search for them on the database, Locate or Google Scholar.
You can find lots of academic-quality content online, but not all online content is appropriate for use in assignments.
Search engines like Google and Bing:
General online searching can be very helpful if you know what you are looking for, or if you are starting out learning about a topic. However, the quality control of general online content is much lower than the other sources discussed on this page, so you will need to evaluate the quality and reliability of every page you find through a general web search.
Both Google and Bing now include AI-generated summaries and other generative-AI content prominently within the results they present when you search. This content is generally not appropriate to use in assignments, as the authorship and currency of this information cannot be verified.
Ideally, any piece of information used in your assignment can be attributed to one or more named authors. If you can see what qualifications or experience the authors have, this may help you to be more confident that what is being said is accurate.
You can also sometimes attribute information to a company or organisation, as unnamed individuals can be consider to have written information on their behalf. This can be applied to government departments, charities and large companies. Avoid attributing information to a website which is more likely to be the host, or publisher, of information without authoring or editing content (for example social media sites).
If you cannot identify either individuals or an organisation who wrote the content of a webpage, think very carefully about whether you can rely on the information given. Whilst it is possible to cite web sources without an identifiable author if the information provided has clear merit, it is generally preferable to use a source where an author can be clearly identified.
The information used to underpin the ideas in your assignments should be current and up-to-date. Internet sources have the potential to be the most up-to-date information available, as there are no delays to publication, but they can also potentially be quite dated, as there is no automatic removal of out-dated content from most websites.
Higher-quality online pages and documents tend to include the date they were written at the beginning or the end of the text. This information is often in the same place as the author's name, sometimes called the 'byline'. Some webpages may also include a 'last updated' date, so show when changes were made to previous content; this can be considered the date of publication when referencing, as information was current at this point.
If you cannot determine when a webpage (or document found online) was last updated, this may be a marker that the information source is lower-quality and cannot be relied upon. Again, it is possible to cite a webpage without a date of publication, but avoid doing so too often.
It can be helpful to consider the intentions and motivations for why something was written or created. Whilst this can be complex, and there may be multiple reasons why something was created, there are four key motivations to consider:
Ideally, most sources you use in your work should use a factual, informative style. You can still use a source if it's style is persuasive, but you should consider if the counter-argument to the author's viewpoint needs independent research. You can also use content written to 'sell', but should be aware of bias as negatives will be significantly-downplayed or absent.
Phrase your search carefully.
If you only use a few keywords, not considering other ways of phrasing what you’re looking for, you may miss out on useful sources. If you search for too many words (your full assignment question, for example), this can lead to irrelevant results. See the search skills section of this page for more information.
Consider where to search.
Most online searches begin from your default search engine. However, there are lots more options which will find more focused content. For example, if you’re looking for academic-level information, you might want to use Google Scholar, which is focused on journal articles and research outputs, and if you need information from the government, you could search gov.uk directly.
Think about who, when and where.
Before reading a webpage closely, check that you can see who wrote it, when it was written or last updated, and where the information relates to (a city or country, or a topic or sector). Without this information, it’s harder to determine the authority or reliability of the source; it also makes it harder to cite and reference.
Not everything online is a webpage.
Alongside standard webpages, you are also likely to find PDFs of official reports, presentations, visual outputs and other documents designed for internal or public use when searching. Documents often have more credibility than general web sources, but you should verify that they are the most recent version available.
Be cautious with ‘authorless’ sources.
‘Authorless’ content takes two primary forms: sites like Wikipedia, which contain crowd-sourced information with no identifiable writers; and content created by or based upon generative-AI outputs. Whilst useful for establishing the general scope and outlines of a topic, both types of content tend towards overviews rather than detailed analysis, and sometimes contain errors or misinformation.
Look at the use of evidence.
Higher-quality online sources tend to provide evidence to reinforce (or challenge) the information they are providing. This might take the form of citations, a reference list or bibliography, hyperlinks to other sources, or quoting or paraphrasing other experts. If some level of external evidence is not presented, the content of a source is more likely to be unreliable.
🔍 There are several techniques and approaches to consider in order to get the most out of academic databases. The tabs in this box introduce some of the things to consider when phrasing your search terms. The following boxes look at how to combine these terms together, and how to reduce and refine the number of results you need to look through. Used together, a structured search can be run to find the best-quality information available.
🔑 When you are searching using Locate or academic databases, you need to break your topic into keywords. This means that you have to consider the words that authors are using to write about a topic.
For example, if you are writing an assignment on the impact of diet on child obesity, your key concepts would be:
diet, child, obesity, child obesity
For each key concept, try to think of as many similar or related words as possible. This can include synonyms, antonyms, and specific concepts within a topic. When you search for sources using a range of different keywords, you will find more and more search results that are relevant to your topic.
🗨️ Some databases assume that words typed next to each other should be searched as phrases (those words, in that order). However, many databases do not do this.
To instruct a database to search for two or more words in the order you have entered them, you can use "double quotation marks" to keep words together when you search. This way you will only get results where these words appear together as a phrase. For example:
“later life”
“maternity leave”
“living standards” OR “standards of living”
 *️⃣ Truncation (or 'wildcards') is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings.
To use truncation, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol (normally an asterisk) at the end. The database will return results that include the word that you entered, plus any ending. For example:
nurs* finds: nurse, nurses, nursing
child* finds: child, children, childhood, childbirth
manag* finds: manage, manages, manager, management etc.
On some databases, you can also use a wildcard in the middle of a word to include both English and American spellings, e.g. col*or, organi*ation
🔍 Most databases use the same basic organisational rules in order to understand what you are asking for. This is sometimes called 'Boolean logic'. Boolean uses a series of commands (symbols and words) to give clear instructions about what you want (and what you don't want).
Use the tabs above to look at some of the most common commands. These commands can be combined with phrase searching and truncation, as discussed elsewhere on this page.
AND
Use AND in a search to:
OR
Use OR in a search to:
NOT
Use NOT in a search to:
🔍 Filters (sometimes called 'facets') help to limit your results after you've run a search. They allow you to just focus on the results which meet the criteria you select.
You probably use filters quite a lot every day. If you are online shopping (in this example for trousers), you might filter by size, price, style, fabric, colour, whether they are in stock, or any combination of these options, in order to find the products you want to take a closer look at.
Academic databases do the same thing for information sources, using categories including those in the tabs above. Click through them to see how filters can help improve your search results.
📅 Most academic databases (including Locate) allow you to filter results based on when they were published. This typically takes the form of setting the earliest and latest years you want research from. On most databases, this is selected using two text boxes; on some databases there may be a slider or visual way of adjusting the date range.
As a very general rule of thumb, research from the last ten years is most likely to still be relevant (and from the last five years is even better).
Remember that when something was published is not necessarily when it was written. Research can take months, or even years, to be edited, reviewed and published in books or journals, so even if something was published very recently it is important to double-check that the research discussed isn't dated or superceded by new developments.
🚻 Demographics is a general word to describe different characteristics of a research population which you might be interested in. The most common demographics which researchers filter results by are age ranges and sex/gender.
The availability and operation of demographic filters varies quite a bit between platforms and databases. The age of participants is generally provided as a series of age ranges (e.g. 'adolescence (13-17 yrs)'; 'young adulthood (18-29 yrs)') where one or more ranges can be selected. Gender filters tend to offer binary male/female options; however, population filters may offer more nuanced options when seeking data on transgender and intersex participants.
Not all databases and platforms include demographic filters, and not all results in these databases will be tagged to allow them to appear in searches filtered in this way. You may wish to consider including important demographic considerations in your initial search terms to ensure that all relevant results are displayed.
🧠 One key thing to look for in initial search results is alternative ways of describing or categorising the topic you are searching for. Some databases use controlled vocabulary (for example some health databases use Medical Subject Headings, or MeSH), whilst others will select subject terms to categorise journal articles relating to a similar topic but using different terminology together.
There is generally a list of subject terms which you can use a limiters within the list of filters on a database. Many databases also include the key subject terms for each search result within the item record - these can be clicked to run a new search based on this terminology.
🗺 Many researchers need to focus on results from one place or country. Whilst this may form part of the search query entered before filtering results, there is also often an option to limit search results based on geography.
A word of caution: whilst the option to limit by geography exists, it is often a more limited tool than the other limiters discussed here. The 'geography' of a research article may be based on where research took place, where the researchers are employed, or the country where the journal in which the research was published is based. Some articles simply do not include information about geography. Whilst it can be used to good effect, this is therefore a filter where the results may be more mixed when used.
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LLR can:
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AWS can:
Academic Writing Developers provide support you in-person (at CU Coventry and CU London) and online, including:
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