Historians of reddit, I'm trying to write a college paper and I was wondering where I could find accurate sources?

by fleetingskies

I am required to find outside sources, specifically journals and articles with an identifiable author. Where can I go about finding accurate sources? What are your favorite (preferably free) ways to locate them? Thank you!!

horriblyefficient

does your college have a library? the staff there will be able to tell you what databases and journals you can access and how to access them (hopefully through the library's own database search). usually the college itself will pay to get students access to certain journals or materials from certain publishing companies.

if there isn't a library, talk to your professor/tutor/whoever is teaching you for this class, they should be able to point you in the right direction. alternatively, ask the student academic support office if there is one (it might not be called that).

you can also use google scholar to locate resources. it is a search engine specifically for academic texts, and has an institution sign-in option so you can see if you have free access to the resource through your college.

what you're looking for is articles from an academic journal that's peer reviewed. the journal will have a name that indicates it specialises in publishing historical research, or broader humanities/social studies topics, or it will have the place or time period you're researching in the name.

Hergrim

Hi - we as mods have approved this thread, because while this is a homework question, it is asking for clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself, which is fine according to our rules. This policy is further explained in this Rules Roundtable thread and this META Thread.

As a result, we'd also like to remind potential answerers to follow our rules on homework - please make sure that your answers focus appropriately on clarifications and detailing the resources that OP could be using.

Additionally, while users may be able to help you out with specifics relating to your question, we also have plenty of information on /r/AskHistorians on how to find and understand good sources in general. For instance, please check out our six-part series, "Finding and Understanding Sources", which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay.