First things first:
- Make the most of your university’s online catalog, the OPAC, and electronic journal databases for your research.
- Online research allows you to work from anywhere — all you need is an internet connection.
To produce a strong academic paper, it’s essential to use various research methods. Online tools provide a wealth of options for quickly and easily finding scholarly literature. To help you avoid relying on Wikipedia — which is generally frowned upon in academic settings — we’ve outlined a few alternative sources of information.
Your University’s Online Catalog
University libraries typically provide an online catalog. Many texts in their collection are now digitized, meaning you don’t have to compete for physical copies. The benefit of digital texts is that they’re accessible anytime, without being tied to library hours or a specific location.
The catalog of your university library not only provides details about its holdings but also offers access to interconnected knowledge platforms like Wiley, Sage, or ProQuest. If your university library holds licenses for these platforms, your student status often grants you access.
The OPAC
OPAC stands for Online Public Access Catalogue and serves as the online catalog for the university library. While each university has its own catalog, the library network within Germany allows students to request and borrow academic literature from other universities if the desired title is unavailable at their own institution. Through the OPAC, you can access not only monographs, anthologies, and encyclopedias but also individual journal articles and digitized versions of various texts. For students who live farther from campus, this system can save valuable time by enabling them to access the needed materials from home, when available.
The Electronic Journal Database
One of the hardest parts of researching is using magazines. In most cases, you only need a single article from a certain issue issue of a year. Or you just want to read different magazines on a certain topic. You can use the electronic journal database to find current journals and journals that have been sold for a long time, in the best case you can read them online and if the journal you are looking for has not yet been digitized, you can see at which universities it is available.
Insider Tip: GRIN
Another important factor in research is the topicality of the existing literature and the topic being dealt with. You will often find little literature on current or relatively new research areas at the University Library. At GRIN, on the other hand, you will find high-quality theses on new ideas, current topics and previously unnoticed focal points of older research areas. About our online catalogue you can quickly and easily find exactly the right specialist literature for your own scientific work, sorted by subject.
With these tips, conducting research for your next (or first) academic paper will become significantly easier.
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