Economics Research Methods

• Books can provide reference information, broad introductions to topics, in-depth treatments of specific topics, and can even serve as primary source material, depending on their content. They can be scholarly or popular, so consider what type of information you need when selecting books for review.  
• Books can be found in catalogs such as the ISU Library's QuickSearch and Worldcat, a union catalog containing millions of records cataloged by OCLC member libraries. Catalogs can be searched by author name, titles words or phrases, Library of Congress Subject Headings, Keywords, ISBN numbers, and other identifiers.
• Books not available locally can be requested via Interlibrary Loan.

• Reference materials contain reputable background and quick information on specific topics and are rarely read front to back. Examples of reference works include dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, standards, cookbooks, handbooks, directories, etc. References can orient users to basic information, to experts in a particular discipline, and to specialized vocabulary used in particular disciplines. Reference works are rarely cited in academic literature.
• The Library does have some reference databases available for searching. For additional information about reference materials, contact your liaison librarian.

• Scholarly journal articles are written by scholars to communicate information with other experts in the same field or discipline, and often use specialized language used by scholars in the same field or discipline. 
• Scholarly articles are produced in a standard, formal format and usually list the scholarly affiliations of the authors. They almost always include references to literature consulted by the authors. They are also often peer-reviewed and edited by editors with scholarly credentials.
• They can be found by searching appropriate library article indexes (such as Web of Science) or discovery tools (such as ISUs Primo discovery tool). NOTE: Primo only links to selected article databases. Use article indexes above for a complete list of titles.You can also find scholarly articles by browsing the contents of scholarly journals that serve the needs of a particular topic or discipline, or by reading through the cited references at the end of other articles.

Not to be confused with a "book review" - review articles are a subset of scholarly articles that synthesize the current state of the research on a particular topic. Review Articles will tell you about::

• the main people working in a field
• recent major advances and discoveries
• significant gaps in the research
• current debates
• ideas of where research might go next

If you are new to a research area review articles are a great way to quickly find key articles are for a given topic. They also tend to be full of references that you can use as a starting point for your literature review searching.

In many indexes and databases, you can limit your search to include only review articles. Some databases might use the term "literature review," but it's the same thing. After you've done a search in the Web of Science Core Collection, you can limit to a publication type called "Reviews."

If the index you are using doesn't allow you to limit to review articles, you can construct your search like this:

[topic] AND ("review article*" OR "literature review*")  - make sure to use the quotation marks, that forces a search as a phrase

• For many fields, researchers present their most up-to-date research results at professional conferences. These results will later be published in conference proceedings, abstracts, or preprints. Sometimes, the conference proceedings can be full research articles as in many engineering and computer science areas. Conference Proceedings should often be consulted for latest development on your topic. 
• The Library's Conference Proceedings: A How-To Guide has extensive information about locating conference proceedings.
• Search for Conference proceedings via Web of Science or Scopus by limiting the type of documents as Conference Proceedings.
• Conference proceedings may also be found by limiting document type to conference proceedings in many of our Article Indexes & Databases.

Data sets are collections of data that are often collected during the course of scholarly research. Data can be spatial and/or numeric, raw or processed, and qualitative or quantitative.If you are collecting data for your thesis, having a a data management plan will help you keep track of your data in the future. See our Data Management Plan (DMP) Guide for more information.

The United States Government Printing Office has and continues to produce a great deal of information useful to researchers each day. Congress, the Supreme Court, the Office of the President and federal agencies can be rich sources of policy information, legislation and historical records. The Iowa State University Library is a congressionally designated federal depository library There is a guide to Government Information for the United States that includes federal and state information sources.

• Statistics reported by government or private sources can be useful when your dissertation relates to social issues.  You may need  statistics to illustrate the importance of your work.
• Visit the Statistical Data Sources guide or contact your liaison librarian for more information.