Research is a process! Try one search and evaluate your results. If necessary, modify your strategy (use different keywords, try using the Boolean operators, etc.) and try again.
Use the different limits available in most databases to help narrow down your results. Of course, if you're not getting enough results, you may need to broaden your search term(s) or select fewer limits.
Some examples of limits are:
Magazines are written for the general public. They often have a lot of advertisements in them.
Journals, on the other hand, are targeted to students or professionals working in a particular field. The usually have very few ads in them. The articles usually include bibliographies at at the end and the author's or authors' credentials (where they went to college and where they work) are given.
Sometimes a publication is peer-reviewed which means that all of the articles have been read and approved for publication by experts in the field.
Peer reviewed materials are excellent sources of information for scholarly papers!
Peer reviewed = Articles read & approved for publication by experts in the field
Experts = People with advanced degrees in the subject or who have worked in the field for many years
Angie, Locke. Fishing for Information. 2015, Wikimedia Commons. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fishing_for_Information_Research_Infographic.png. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
