Zum Warenkorb
Zum Warenkorb
Welcome to GRINspiration, the online magazine for students! Here, you'll find everything you won't learn in class: tips and tricks for writing and formatting your papers, study aids, and quick summaries on topics that keep popping up throughout your studies.
You are here: Magazine 3 Tips for Online Research at University
All articles
grin |
28. October 2022 • Reading duration: 5 Min

3 Tips for Online Research at University

Research is the cornerstone of writing any academic paper. We’ve compiled a few tips to help you optimize your online research during your time at university.

What to expect:

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.

Do you like our magazine? Then sign up for our GRIN newsletter now!