StudentHacks.org

I’m in love with aggregator sites like Yahoo Pipes and Dapper.com.

These nifty mash-up tools allow you to hack feeds and/or search results to get the information you want as a filtered RSS feed, XML, email, or website widget.

And what’s great is that student hackers have created helpful feeds to help you research smarter without doing any work.

Here are some of my favorite filters that will email results to you:

• Google Scholar Results Extraction
• Google Scholar Paper Extractor
• Google Scholar RSS/Email Filter

Let me know of any others that you like so I can add them to the list.

Recommended Reading

• Social Networking Hacks
• Super-Sized List of Academic Databases
• 5 Online Libraries You Should Know About
  
• 101+ Web Resources for Students
• Where to Find a Librarian 24/7

I’ve been spending a lot of time writing and researching this semester.

I’m actually having dreams about one of my papers – and I have so much more research to do.

Anyway, here is a list of online databases that I’ve been using to find journal articles for my lit reviews.

Most of these databases require a student ID and password, but I’m listing them here because it’s quick access if you’re in a school library:

• ABI/INFORM Complete Pro Quest
• ACM Digital Library
  
• AccessScience
• AgeLine Database
• Alternative Press Index
• America’s Historical Newspapers
  
• ArtStor
• Business Full Text (Wilson)
• Communication Abstracts
  
• CQ Researcher
• D&B Million Dollar Dabase
• Dissertatations and Theses [ProQuest]
• Gale Virtual Reference Library
  
• EBSCO Online Research Database
• Emerald Full Text
• JSTOR
  
• LexisNexis
• Reference Universe
• Oxford Reference Online
• Sage Journal List
  
• World Cat

If you don’t have access to library databases at home, you should definitely start your research using Google Scholar. To describe Google Scholar as simply a website that archives and organizes online journal articles would be an understatement.

Google Scholar not only lets you search for articles by search terms (like every other journal database), but it provides you with great search features like:

Related Articles Link
Most every article listed within Google Scholar has a “related articles”link. The “related articles” link expands on articles not cited within the article itself, and can provide you with a long list of scholarly journal articles you might not have thought about checking out. You can spend hours just clicking through the related links of the journal articles you’re interested in.

Cited By Link
Another great tool on Google Scholar is the “Cited by __” link. This nifty link will give you set of online journal articles that cite the article you’re interested in. So the articles with more citations should give you an idea of the article’s importance within your research topic. It’s a great tool to quickly find articles most referenced in other journals, which means you might want to consider reading and citing those highly referenced articles too.

There are many other advanced search features and scholar preference searches, so go check it out.

Here are five great online resources that can help you research prior to writing your next paper. These online resources can help you save time, and can really help if you don’t have time to visit a library.

Google Scholar
The advanced features on Google Scholar can help you quickly narrow down and research your topic of interest. Google scholar provides you a rich database of research material available on the web. Though much of the content requires passwords to view full journal articles, you can still view abstracts for free.

E-Research – Harvard University
This research site will provide you with a list of journal articles and online references for whatever topic you’re interested in. Though this site was built for Harvard students, you can still access and use the site without a student ID. Simply click on the “show unrestricted” button to get access to free content.

LibrarySpot.com
Library Spot can provide you with online encyclopedias, dictionaries, journal articles, and other important reference materials. The website can seem overwhelming at first because of the amount of information available, but it’s definitely a great place to start for general research.

WorldCat.org
WorldCat.org can provide you with a laundry list of books and articles to reference for whatever topic you’re interested in. It’s sort of like going to the largest library you could imagine. It’s all there for you to sort through to find the books that might help you for your paper. The only problem is that it doesn’t provide any abstracts for the books you want to know more about.

Encyclopedia.com
This site is valuable because it provides links to tons of great online encyclopedias. Just type in a term and you’ll find dozens of definitions and information about that topic with links going to the various online encyclopedias. The only problem with this site is that it’s cluttered with ads.

These five online libraries will help you with your research.