Planning Your Research
Kristin Van Diest and Tricia Boucher
Learning Objectives
- Get started with library research
- Discover tools to organize your research
- Learn more about institutional resources
Getting Started
Library research is where most researchers start, collecting articles and information for their literature reviews.
Research Help
Want a refresher on library database search techniques? Choose from the interactive tutorials on our Research Tutorials page. You can start at the beginning, or click through the side navigation to find the boxes that help you best – and will level up your searching to find and sort through relevant information quickly and easily.
Having trouble finding the resources you need, finding the full text of an article, or finding the expert who can help? Ask Us! You can chat, email, or set up a one-on-one research consultation with a librarian or specialist who can help you.
Targeting journals
When planning your research, it is important to start thinking about where you would like to publish. If you aim to publish your research academically, then you will want to choose the journal(s) you’d like to publish in and review their publishing guidelines, scope, and policies to ensure that they align both with your research and with your personal ethics. For example, are you comfortable publishing in a journal that will retain the rights to your manuscript? Or that charges readers exorbitant fees to access your work? Are you publishing for tenure purposes or to make the greatest impact in your field? It is a good idea to think about your personal publication ethics before choosing, therefore you can identify journals that align with your views.
Visit the library’s Where to Publish Your Research? guide to learn more.
Note: it is important to be weary of predatory publishers as you start your research. Predatory publishers are seeking to profit off of you and your work, not further scholarly research. It can be tricky to determine whether or not a journal is safe for you to publish in. In general, if you see these things, you should be sure to double check the journal or get a second opinion before engaging with them:
- Manuscript solicitation via email
- High article processing fees
- Extremely fast peer-review period
- Short time to publication
- Unclear or unethical author’s rights
Be sure to check the journal name in a reputable source, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) for open access publications, or Ulrich’s Periodical Directory for other journals. Note: Ulrich’s must be accessed through the University Libraries website. It can be found in the list of databases.
One recent trend to keep in mind is that at many higher education institutions, the library is operating as a scholarly publisher. This is particularly true for open access scholarly journals. If you find an open access journal that you would like to publish in, and you notice that it is published through a university or college with a