ENGL 1302 - Instructor Lucille Dominguez: Research Tips and Information

Online databases are available 24 hours a day.

Available from any computer with Internet access.  Just click on "Off Campus Access" next to any of the database names.  Enter your my.epcc.edu login credentials.

If your instructor ever asks you to find a magazine or a journal, you might be wondering,  What is the difference?

Magazine

• Written for a general audience at about the 7th grade level.
• Articles are usually written by people with Journalism or English degrees.  The author's don't always have a degree in the field they are writing about.
• Usually have a lot of pictures and advertisements.  The goal of a magazine is to sell magazines, so they put something eye-catching on the cover to get your attention.

Journal

• Contains information and research on a particular field of study. 
• Articles in journals are written by people who have a degree in that particular or similar field or they have a lot of experience in that area of study.
• The articles are usually written for the professional and may use technical language.
• The goals of a journal is to further knowledge in a particular field.
• Articles usually contain abstracts, graphs, and bibliographies.
• There are journals for all different types of subjects (Business, Political Science, Nursing, Libraries, Science, History, etc...)
• Information is more reliable than a magazine because the articles are written by professionals in that field.