Research Resources
Research Basics: An open academic research skills course
There's a lot of digital content out there, and we want to help you get a handle on it. Where do you start? What do you do? How do you use it? Don’t worry, this course has you covered.
This introductory program was created by JSTOR to help you get familiar with basic research concepts needed for success in school. The course contains three modules, each made up of three short lessons and three sets of practice quizzes. The topics covered are subjects that will help you prepare for college-level research. Each module ends with an assessment to test your knowledge.
Academic Integrity
Online Tutorial - Plagiarism
This tutorial offered by SFU helps you understand what plagiarism is and provides several techniques for avoiding plagiarism. It will take you about 30 minutes to work your way through the tutorial.
Plagiarism Quiz: Writing Skills
ZoteroBib
ZoteroBib helps you build a Works Cited instantly from any computer or device, without creating an account or installing any software. It’s brought to you by the team behind Zotero, the powerful open-source research tool recommended by thousands of universities worldwide, so you can trust it to help you seamlessly add sources and produce perfect bibliographies.
Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
This resource is intended to help you become more comfortable with the uses of and distinctions among quotations, paraphrases, and summaries. It compares and contrasts the three terms, gives some pointers, and includes a short excerpt that you can use to practice these skills.
MLA Owl Purdue How to Videos
The vidcasts in this playlist discuss MLA formatting and style.
Evaluating Sources
This section will help you evaluate resources you use for research, whether it is an online or print journal article, a website, a book, a newspaper article, or other source that you want to cite. You will need to evaluate each resource you use for research. Keep in mind that many publications have a particular bias or agenda, which may not be obvious at first glance. (UBC Library)
Is this a Scholarly or Popular Source?
You may be asked to find scholarly sources for your research paper or assignment. There are key differences between scholarly and popular publications. Use this resource to help you.
Is this a Primary or Secondary Source?
Use this resource to help determine if your source is primary or secondary.
Types of Sources
When you are collecting resources for an assignment it is important to gather a variety of sources. This allows you to populate your assignment with credible sources. This resource lists the types of sources most frequently used in academic research and describes the sort of information that each commonly offers.
Using Origin, Purpose, Value, and Limitation (OPVL)
Origin, Purpose, Value and Limitation (OPVL) is a technique for analyzing sources. It is used extensively in the International Baccalaureate curriculum. Use the questions in this document to analyze materials and to assess how appropriate they will be for your research. Do not expect to be able to answer every question, all the time, for all information resources you look at. Rather, try to use the questions as a tool to help you look at sources critically.