Publication Types
Leanne Wells
Introduction
Students sometimes experience difficulties in determining which publication types provide the most useful information for their research topic. Essentially, the type of publications you’ll need will depend on your assignment and the research question you are attempting to answer.
Do you need a broad overview about your topic, scholarly journal articles, current news, a case study, a company or industry report, or perhaps some statistics?
Not sure? That’s OK! Libraries are great places to ask for help. Try chatting online with library staff via our Ask Us virtual help desk feature on the library website, Library staff can offer students some suggestions as you search for scholarly information for your assignments.
Below are a few examples of the types of publications available to you from UNB Libraries.
Reference Materials
Each of our libraries has a collection of reference materials (encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks) which can help students with valuable background information about your topic, define terminology, and help to identify key scholars as well as research topics.
Some of our reference materials are available online through the library website (via e-Reference Materials), others are available in print. In either format, reference materials will provide you with reliable information throughout your studies.
You’ll learn more about using reference materials in the Finding Background Information section of this module. A few examples of online Business encyclopedias and handbooks at UNB Libraries are:
QUICK TIP
Students often go to Wikipedia to find background information on a topic and academic references. While Wikipedia may be a good first step, the information you find might not be reliable and should not be included in an academic paper unless it can be verified using quality sources.
Books
As demonstrated in Module 1: Research Basics, our library catalogue, UNB WorldCat, provides a quick and easy way to search for print and electronic materials at UNB Libraries. Search results will include books, e-Books, journals, newspapers, and magazines, as well as content from selected article databases. A few examples of books available at UNB Libraries using UNB WorldCat are:
Scholarly Journals
As noted in the previous section, professors often expect students to include a few journals articles that come from “scholarly” or “academic” or “refereed” journals in their reports or assignments. What constitutes a scholarly journal?
Scholarly journals are important sources of academic information! UNB Libraries subscribe to over 90,000 journals in either print or electronic form.
Scholarly journals publish a number of articles containing detailed results of original research and experimentation. These articles are often written by faculty from academic institutions like UNB. Over time the publication of these articles has a cumulative effect. Scholarly journals are largely responsible for building e