Locating a full-text research report

The following are tips for locating a full-text, freely-available research report, to support the assignment to read and summarize the study design of an actual research report. Before you begin searching, determine an area of interest (economics, agriculture, medicine,...) and a topic within that area that interests you.

Open access journals

Use The Directory of Open Access Journals to locate journals in your area of interest. Browse the available online journals for a suitable article.

Professional recommendation

Contact a professional who works or has expertise in your area of interest. Ask this person to recommend a journal article that they think is interesting and that a novice could understand.

EBSCOhost

The EBSCOhost service, available via many library websites, provides access to numerous topical databases. The link to the service is typically via a "Databases" or "Electronic databases" heading on the library's website. To access the service you need to log in to the database with your library barcode. Then select EBSCOhost Web.

Both Academic Search Premier and Academic Search Elite (usually somewhat lower down on the list of databases) provide access to a large selection of journal articles, many of which are published research reports. To narrow the search to include full-text access to research studies, specify Full Text and Scholarly (peer-reviewed) Journals.