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Dental Assisting Program

Dental Assisting Program

Professional Journals & Research

Research TIps: What is an Academic Article?

Scholarly journals are periodicals in which researchers publish articles on their work. Most often these articles discuss recent research. Scholarly journals are typically peer-reviewed journals. Some search engines that search for periodical sources identify whether or not the sources are from peer-reviewed publications, so look for that information when you do searches.

Other Names:

  • Professional Journal Articles
  • Academic Journal Articles
  • Scholarly Journal Articles
  • Peer Reviewed Journal Articles 

And, any combination of the above, lol. 

 

Research Tips: Keyword Searching

Keyword searching is used by internet search engines, databases, and the library catalog. Keep in mind that the search will find matches for specific words, not concepts. The default in the library catalog (and most databases) is find results that include every word in your search. Think of this as using AND between the words: 

  • teeth AND oral health AND children
  • teeth oral health children

The two searches above are the same, and will find all books in the library catalog that have all three words in the description of the book. 

If you want to find a specific phrase, with the words next to each other in order, use double quotation marks around the phrase:

  • "pulp vitality testing" 
  • "oral chemotherapeutics"
  • "dentine hypersensitivity" AND treatment

You might want to broaden your search to include synonyms or other related words. To find either of two words or phrases, use OR between them:

  • "dental health" OR "oral hygiene"

You can also use truncation to search for different forms of a word. The asterisk * is used in the library catalog and many databases for this. 

  • peridont*
  • peridonat* AND treatment

In the above searches, peridont* will find the words periodontal, periodontist, periodontist, periodonticsperiodontically, etc. 

When combining searches, use parentheses () around different parts of the search, as in the examples above. 

Suggested Databases

Library Research