Types of Articles
The resources recommended on this page are good starting points to find both scholarly and popular articles for your research projects.
Many of your instructors will require you to use scholarly or peer-reviewed sources in your research. Peer review is a process scholarly writing goes through prior to publication, in which subject matter experts review and make suggestions for revision to ensure that the research meets rigorous standards for the field. Peer reviewed research can come in the form of books or articles. See the video below for a walk-through of the process.
Popular sources include newspaper and magazine articles, reports, blogs, radio shows, etc.
For more on different types of sources, visit the Evaluating Sources section of the NCLT 106 Resource Guide.
What is Peer Review?
General Searching in Scout
Scout is UA Libraries' main search tool. You can imagine it sitting on top of all the libraries' resources, and reaching into them to pull out search results. You can use it to search books, journal articles, news, and video from our collections and subscriptions all at once. It's a great place to start your research.
If your results are overwhelming and you're not finding what you need, try one of the databases below!
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Scout This link opens in a new window
The University of Alabama's discovery service, searching content from hundreds of electronic databases, print resources from our library catalog, ebooks, videos, news and more.
Basic Searching in Scout (2025)
This video covers basic search procedures in Scout and some of Scout's most popular features.
Advanced Searching in Scout 2025
This video covers some advanced search functions and concepts in Scout, UA Libraries' all-in-one discovery tool. Topics include advanced search fields, boolean operators, search modes, and limiters.
Subject Searching in Databases
A database is is a smaller, specialized collection of information that may be organized by subject (history, biology) or by item type (newspapers, scholarly journals, ebooks). Searching databases can give you different and more focused results than Scout. It's a good idea to try searching in both Scout and databases to find the best material for your research.
Below, I've recommended a few databases for scholarly articles, newspapers, and statistics to get you started.
Can't find what you're looking for? Use the dropdown menus on the UA Libraries Databases A-Z page to browse more databases by subject and material type.
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Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Multi-disciplinary database; articles from journals and other publications. coves business, education. history, literature, medicine, philosophy, politics, and technology.
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JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Images of the full text of many scholarly titles in a range of subject areas, including literature, biological sciences, economics, finance, and statistics. Search the archive or pull up a specific article. Artstor is now available on the JSTOR platform.
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Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Project MUSE provides full-text access scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences. The database is a collaboration between Johns Hopkins University and other university presses and not-for-profit publishers. Also included are the UPCC collections in Asian and Pacific Studies, and Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction.
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Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
This database contains US and non-US news sources; legal materials: cases, statutes, law journals and other secondary law resources; and company and financial information on millions of United States and international companies and executives.
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ProQuest Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Provides full text of many U.S. and international news sources. Includes the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Times of London, plus other newspapers and news wires.
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Statista This link opens in a new window
A statistics portal to the world of data and facts, categorized by subjects, and provides quantitative facts on finance, media & marketing, politics, telecommunications, sports & recreation, and many more areas of interest. Sources of information include market researchers, trade publications, scientific journals, and government databases.
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InterLibrary Loan 2025
This video will walk you through the steps to request materials through UA Libraries' Interlibrary Loan service.