COMM 2367

1. Experts (including professors) conduct research on their topic of interest and report on results in research journals.

2. The articles go through a process known as "peer review" where other experts read the article, make suggestions for improvement, and decide whether it gets published.

3. Most research articles will have a review of previous research on the topic, a presentation of the methods and data for their research and a bibliography.

4. The library at North Carolina State University has a great page showing what a scholarly research article looks like.

Research articles are published in journals, most of which are only available on a subscription basis. The OSU Libraries subscribes to many journals (online and print), and provides access to them to students and faculty. 

You can search for journal articles in research databases on the OSU Libraries website. Below are a few suggested databases. 

Important caveat: While the majority of search results you'll get in the databases above are from research journals, the databases also have newspaper and magazine (non-scholarly) articles. To limit your search to just research articles, check the "Academic Journals / Peer Reviewed" box on the left side of the search results page.