Purpose: Inform, entertain, opinion
Content: News, opinion, topical, short and long articles
Tone: Casual and accessible
Authors: Staff writers or journalists
Audience: Broad general audience
Review: Approval by editor
Keyword Strategies: Broad or specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Inform, entertain, opinion
Content: Current, brief, news, events, opinion
Tone: Casual and accessible
Authors: Staff writers or journalists
Audience: Broad general audience
Review: Approval by editor
Keyword Strategies: Specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Report original research
Content: Background, methods, results/data, analysis, conclusions of a research project
Tone: Formal and specialized
Authors: Researchers, professors, scholars
Audience: Academic
Review: Peer-reviewed by other researchers / experts
Keyword Strategies: Specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Inform
Content: News, trends, case studies, reviews
Tone: Understandable within profession
Authors: Staff writers or members of the profession
Audience: Targeted profession members
Review: Editor, professional associations
Keyword Strategies: Broad or specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Inform
Content: Background, broad overview, research, how-to
Tone: Formal and specialized
Authors: Scholars, specialists
Audience: Academic, professionals
Review: Approval by editor
Keyword Strategies: Broad, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Inform
Content: Background information, factual, data, statistics
Tone: Factual, technical
Authors: Scholars, specialists, writers, publishers
Audience: General audience
Review: Approval by editor
Keyword Strategies: Broad or specific, artifact or artifact's context
Purpose: Describe an innovation as a part of obtaining intellectual property protections. A patent allows a patent holder exclusive rights to making, using, importing and selling a patented innovation for a limited period of time.
Content: Technical information about the invention including a description of the invention and drawings
Tone: Formal and technical
Authors: Inventors & innovators, individuals & companies
Audience: Engineers, designers, legal professionals, people who want to use an innovation or are working on related innovations
Review: Published patents have been approved by the patent office
Search Strategies: Inventor name, company, keywords, classification; artifact
OneSearch is the CU Boulder Libraries Discovery Search tool, searching most of the Libraries content at once. This means it is good for finding:
SciTech Premium Collection is a science and technology databases providing access to:
This database has a filter to allow you to limit your search to results that include advertisements:
Web of Science is an interdisciplinary database of scholarly literature, including Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and conference proceedings articles.
ProQuest News and Newspapers provides access to current and historical newspaper articles from major U.S. news outlets
This database has a filter to allow you to limit your search to results that include advertisements:
Knovel is a platform of scientific and technical ebooks and reference sources from professional societies and various publishers.
Patents are freely accessible documents. However, searching can be complex, because patents use stylized language, and because they are often filed in particular countries. The guide to patent research below recommends several tools to help you find them more efficiently. It also recommends several patent searching tutorials. Search by patent number, keyword, inventor, or company.
You won't get it done all at once.
Sometimes you need to do some research to figure out what to research.
Use multiple keywords, search tools, and search strategies
OneSearch and other databases are search tools and collections of information paid for by University Libraries. These search tools will find information that is not available on Google. They also have search features, filters, and sorting more advanced than what is provided by Google.
You may need to brainstorm lots of terms and phrases related to your research. Include multiple aspects of your research question, synonyms and broader concepts.
Quotes will search a phrase instead of separate keywords.
Asterisk is a wildcard, and it will search variations in word endings
Consider multiple words that mean the same thing or a similar concept
Consider words that mean multiple things
Consider spelling out acronyms, or searching for the phrase and the acronym
AND indicates that both terms or phrases have to be in your search results
OR indicates the either of your search terms could be in the results, and is good for synonyms or related terms
NOT eliminates results with a certain term
Keyword searching isn't your only option:
Researchers conduct original research and then publish articles about their research in scholarly journals. Articles published in scholarly journals usually go through a peer review process. Researchers may also present their research at a professional conference and in this case they also write a paper that is peer reviewed and published in the proceedings of the conference.
Lets explore how the peer review process works using the video "Peer Review in 3 Minutes" by the the North Carolina State University Library.
Infographic by Jayashree Rajagopalan
